As a developer I endeavor to keep a consistent working environment on all of my computers. Meaning editing with VIM, version-controlling with GIT and using all the cool POSIX tools directly from the Terminal to do whatever. At home I use Mac OS X and for servers I use Debian. So working with the terminal is basically the same for both systems.

Unfortunately on Windows it is not as easy to setup a proper toolchain as it is not a Posix compliant operating system. So instead of a powerful shell like Bash with lots of helper tools you get the Commandline with almost nothing. Luckily there is Cygwin which brings some kind of Linux-flaire to Windows by providing Posix tools and a nice terminal called mintty. Still it is not the same as running on Linux but it is a step in the right direction. The main drawback using Cygwin is that you are still on Windows. Meaning you can't just clone a Github repository and compile it. When you do so there is always something missing. Also you keep running into trouble with Cygwins way of putting all drives in /cygdrive instead of using the native drive letters on Windows. So to get the real Linux feeling I decided to actually use real Linux ... in a virtual machine.

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