Darwin Terminal in Windows.

**[SomeGuy]** · 07-04-2008 08:24 PM

Are there any Darwin terminal emulators for PC? I would like to get good at Darwin without trying to find a mac ISO and stuff. Just the terminal. You know, Terminal.app?

Also, if I were to in C program a program that would display a message, ask for input, and if the input is menu, go to the menu, if it's time, display the time, and so on?

**ninja9578** · 07-05-2008 02:14 AM

You could always remotely access your mac.

I doubt it, although if you write terminal code with no mac specific features then it should work on any unix terminal and I'm sure that you can find an emulator for an older unix. You could also use a Linux Live CD since Linux is based on UNIX.

**Ynot** · 07-05-2008 03:08 AM

terminal's a terminal
just a prompt you type into
it's the API's behind the terminal that's key

portability's always good
stick to POSIX stuff where ever you can
(no bash'isms, no darwin'isms)

then one shell script should function on all posix systems
(linux, solaris, bsd, osx, etc., etc.)

hell even windows, if it has cygwin or mingw

**[SomeGuy]** · 07-05-2008 04:25 AM

Thanks guys! I'll find something.

**dsr** · 07-08-2008 03:52 AM

xXSomeGuyXx, do you mean you just want a UNIX shell environment (like the one found in the Terminal.app program in Mac OS X) that runs on Windows? If so, you're probably looking for Cygwin. Or you could try a Linux distro in a virtual machine via free software like VirtualBox.

**[SomeGuy]** · 07-08-2008 05:06 AM

I tried VB, but it didn't work for me, but I mean, like the actual "Welcome to Darwin!" thing. Cygwin might work, I'll look into it.

**dsr** · 07-08-2008 03:50 PM

Well, you could edit /etc/motd on any UNIX system to say "Welcome to Darwin!" if that's all you want.

Can you please tell us why you want to use Darwin specifically? I can't think of any reason unless you wanted to become more familiar with Mac OS X's filesystem, which doesn't make sense since you don't run Mac OS X (and even if you intended to in the future, any UNIX environment would give you command-line practice). If I knew your needs better, I might be able to give you a better recommendation.

**[SomeGuy]** · 07-08-2008 04:36 PM

I just want to get good at using the Mac OS X terminal.

**dsr** · 07-08-2008 05:42 PM

Didn't you say you don't run Mac OS X? Assuming that that's the case, why do you want to practice with Mac OS X's *nix environment specifically? Linux distros have a better *nix environment than Mac OS X (largely due to package management). I can't think of any command-line programs that run on Mac OS X/Darwin but not on Linux. Where did you even get the idea of trying to learn "Darwin" (as opposed to general UNIX shell commands that run on any *nix operating system)?

Also I'm not sure if you're clear on this, but realize that Terminal.app is simply one of several Mac OS X programs that lets you use the Mac OS X/Darwin command line, and realize that the Mac OS X/Darwin command-line defaults to the GNU bash shell which Linux also uses, so the Linux command line will feel virtually the same as the Mac OS X command line. So try out a Linux distro on a separate partition, a spare hard drive, a virtual machine, a flash drive, or whatever else you can think of. More advanced distros like Arch, Slackware, and Gentoo might actually be a good place to start because you'll learn much faster and the documentation is excellent, but you could always try a bloated "newbie distro" like Ubuntu (which by the way can now be installed inside a Windows partition via Wubi), openSUSE, or Fedora if you feel lost with the better ones. Debian is also worth considering. Cygwin is the closest thing to a *nix environment on Windows, but a real Linux distro (or of course FreeBSD which Darwin was ~~copied from~~ based on) is your best bet.