Here is a “scenario”. We use that term a lot at work to denote something that someone is doing that we may need to emulate to capture a support problem or an engineering issue. You be the judge of this…
A person is doing very hands on work with Linux. His hands are even dirty on files like /etc/fstab, installing rpm files, editing various files, making directories and putting things in them. Its all explained in a readme but there is a catch. The readme kind of assumes the person doing the “reading” is running da Linux. If you are running da Linux (and it does not matter what flavor), you have the tools necessary to do the work, BTW. Most distributions ship with common tools like tar, zip, scp/ssh or its cousin sftp, and wonderful and ever accessible xterm or cousins. Lets just dwell on how important an xterm can be. With an xterm, a person can do file management, task management, delivery, backup and recovery, and finally administration. Because the xterm is just a so-called window. Well, this person was running Windows XP. So, without adding some nice little touches like Putty or cygwin, how does one do ssh? You need something like SecureCRT but it costs or perhaps there are others. But the primary point here is that its difficult in the scenario. Windows XP is just not made for what I call “hands on” computing. Its a freaking desktop. But all is not lost in the scenario. You can add things to make it better. I cover a few of the specimens of glue below:
OpenSSH - well, this will do wonders for your life when you have to deal with bunches of unruly Linux systems; but you need a way to do SSH. Putty and Cygwin work wonders. Never heard of Cygwin? Well go forth and find it using the google tree of knowledge or just go here and have some fun downloading. What it does is way more than just some shell you launch for ssh or scp. It can do X Windows, you can run Desktop Environments in it if you wish. But I use it for the shell it gives me. I get shell. Shell is important. The windows command shell is not important. Its really not made for what I called “hands on” computing. You want something that remembers the last X commands you typed; that does command line completions, that retains a history of the things you did. Go forth and get Cygwin!
Putty and Terminal Programs - these work great in other settings and you can setup profiles to use. Its saved me a few times to have plain old putty installed on a Windows box. It will allow you to do a variety of things with Linux or BSD servers. If you interact with that wide wooly world and don’t need the gusto that Cygwin brings at least consider setting up a terminal program like Putty or SecureCRT.
These are just the baselines of what good open source programs can do for ya. You can use a great many no matter if you use Windows or Linux. They’re easy to find. Some are browsers and some allow some nice multi-protocol IM’ing. Others do office stuff, editing, etc. You can find the source, Luke!
