Sometimes there are no available desktop or laptop running Unix or Linux, but we miss these utilities on Unix. Thanks the efforts of numerous communities and companies; the utilities of Unix are ported to Windows in different projects. We'll introduce some of them.
Cygwin
Cygwin is a large collection of GNU and open source tools and a simulated POSIX layer on Windows. You may think Cygwin a self-contained mini Unix distribution within Windows. Even if you have no previous knowledge or expreience of Unix, you may view Cygwin an enhanced console with a variety of functionality. Your experience on Cygwin will also apply to future Unix or Linux use.
There are many things able to be done on Cygwin, including but not limited to:
- Files and directories management
- Text file editing with UTF-8 support
- Publishing with LaTeX/TeX system
- Programming in several languages, e.g. C, C++, Perl, Python, Ruby, Tcl
- Version control system, e.g. CVS, subversion, git and mercurial
- Scientific computing and statistics with R and Octave
- Telnet, FTP, and SSH client and other network utilites, e.g. wget and curl
C and C++ programming in Cygwin is relatively limited compared with the numerous libraries on real Unix and Linux system. However, it is possible to compile some C or C++ libraries on Cygwin. Sometimes some modules of Perl, Python or other languages are written in C; thoses modules can be compiled and installed on Cygwin as well.
GNUWin32
For any reason you need original DOS box on Windows instead of Cygwin, take a look at GnuWin. This project has ported many Unix utilites onto Windows. The usages of these utilities is generally similar to their Unix comtemporaries. I won't dive into their usages since they are almost same in Unix and Windows.
Occationally, these utilities collide with Windows utilities of the same name. Some strange system problems may arise in this situation. Be aware of the problem.
Miscellaneous things
Many utilities have been ported onto Windows by different projects. Search them with search engines like Google. For example, search Emacs and Windows; you'll find Emacs for Windows. Sometiles their functionality vary in some degree to their Unix relatives due to system issues.
If you need a script language on Windows, you may use Perl in Cygwin, or acquire Perl for Windows. There are two major Perl implementations on Windows; they are StrawBerry Perl and ActivePerl. They have different licenses and supports. You may check these two Perl editions and choose one. If you prefer Python over Perl, there are also Windows binaries of Python available.