You are a student who wants to learn Linux but don’t want or afraid to install Linux on the hardware. Or, Your office workstation runs Windows but you still need Linux/Unix tools for some tasks.
For one reason or the other, there’s often a need for Linux/Unix tools when running Windows as primary OS. Thankfully, there are many ways to achieve this.
The choices are:
- GnuWin32 http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/ Native port of GNU tools to Win32 platform
- UnxUtils http://sourceforge.net/projects/unxutils This is also native port of GNU tools to Windows
- MinGW/MSYS http://www.mingw.org/ Windows port of GCC and other GNU utilities
- Cygwin http://www.cygwin.com Emulated Linux-like environment for Windows
Linux on Virtualization software
- Install your favorite distro on on a virtualization software such as VMware Server http://www.vmware.com/products/server/ , VirtualBox http://www.virtualbox.org/ which are both free of cost.
- coLinux based distros
Linux distros using coLinux can run directly on top of Windows. Some such distros are AndLinux http://www.andlinux.org/, Ulteo http://www.ulteo.com, Topologilinux http://www.topologilinux.com/ .
- Besides there’s also Xming, Microsoft SFU and Interix. Xming is an X Window server for Windows. SFU provides a Unix Environment on Windows including many services like NFS, NIS etc.
I have used GnuWin32 and AndLinux only. AndLinux is my favorite. I strongly recommend it. I love it because it’s very minimal but still fast and efficient. It fully meet my needs i.e. log analysis.
Downloading AndLinux
You can download it from here http://www.andlinux.org/downloads.php.
There are two options
- minimal / XFCE version, 131 MB:
- KDE version, 653 MB:
Pick your choice per your needs. The 131 XCFE version is what I used.
Installing and using AndLinux
Installation is straight but there are choices you need to make as you need. I picked the default choice which runs it as a service automatically. I picked cofs for Windows file access as that’s quick, easy and works great.
Once installed, you can login as root. The default password is blank. The windows drive selected for access from AndLinux during the installation is available at /root/windows
Since I cannot do copy/paste between the console and Windows application, I fired up ssh ( /etc/init.d/ssh start) and ssh to it using putty.
:)
Guest Post By Benjamin Rualthanzuava . He co-founded a community, user contributed content blog misual.com. He’s spent the last five years wondering what he really wants to do in life. Follow him on @twitter. Check his other articles on this blog.
He currently works for an MNC in Bangalore. :)
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Great. Pretty informative post. Thanks for the share.