There is a Unix environment for Windows systems called the Cygwin Toolkit. It can be downloaded for free from the Cygwin web site. It has a nice installer program and it is increasingly automated and foolproof. The Cygwin toolkit is an increasingly massive set of programs and libraries that can allow your Windows system to run programs that were written for Linux/Unix systems.

As of July, 2003, the Cygwin toolkit includes an X-Server called XFree86. XFree86 is the same X-Server that most Linux systems use. In other words, it is pretty damned good. The last time I downloaded the Cygwin toolkit, the XFree86 programs were installed and the Cygwin packager provided a windows script called "startxwin.bat".

Cygwin is wonderful in many ways, and if you are forced to use a Windows system, but you want to have access to Linux tools, then Cygwin is a great way to go. You can start X in a window, then run xterminals and other cool stuff.

-- PaulJohnson - 04 Aug 2003