Unix Environments

Cygwin: Cygwin is a "unix-like" environment that you can install on a machine running Windows. Included is a shell, all the basic unix commands, editors and the gcc C compiler. There are a number of advantages:

No need to set up a machine to "dual boot" (no repartitioning of hard disks, etc).
You can use your favorite Windows text editor to create/edit C programs.
No significant security implications (over what problems you already may have running windows).

Cygwin can be down-loaded from cygwin.com The system can be installed directly from the Internet using the Cygwin setup program - you will be asked what packages you want installed. The basic stuff you probably want is in "Base" and in "Devel". Lots of other stuff is available (but you probably don't need anything else to get started).

FreeBSD, Linux: These are full-blown Unices that can be installed on x86 computers. You can replace your current operating system (probably not what you want to do!), or, with some careful work, you can configure a single machine as "dual boot". A dual boot machine can has multiple operating systems installed on the hard disk, you can choose (at boot time) which to run.

FreeBSD is based on BSD Unix which was originally developed at the University of California, Berkeley. FreeBSD was created by and is now maintained by a large group of people, although there are formal, strict guidelines on what makes up each official release. FreeBSD has proven to be a high quality Unix distribution, although changes are incorporated at a slower pace than with Linux. You can get ISO images of the FreeBSD installation CDs at www.freebsd.org, as well as documentation on how to prepare your system for installation (and on how to actually install the software).

Linux is a Unix-type operating system originally developed by Linus Torvalds. Unlike FreeBSD, there are lots of different Linux distributions available from many organizations/vendors. One of the most widely distributed versions is available from www.redhat.com. Redhat has lots of documentation on getting started, how to install, etc. Redhat also offers service (advise, etc) for a price. The base Redhat distribution is available over the WWW (in the form of ISO images) for free.

FreeBSD Bootable CD: We have available to us a version of FreeBSD that boots directly from CD (thanks to CS student Larry Lansing). This provides a complete Unix environment running on your laptop (or desktop) without needing any installation. The big disadvantage is that the environment is not permanent - as soon as you reboot you lose any changes you have made (everything is running from a ramdisk). This CD does support the network so it is possible to get/put files to remote machines (ssh, scp, ftp are supported). It is possible to "mount" your Windows Hard Disk when running this version of FreeBSD, although this makes it possible to mess up your hard disk if you do something wrong...

Dave has a master copy of this CD, copies will be available to anyone who wants them within a few days...