can you use Unix Terminal on Windows Vista or Mac OS X?

[Izzy123]

Hi I'm currently doing a school assignment. It gives us a program that only works in Unix and we have to run it multiple times with different buffer sizes.

But the problem is that I dont have Unix at home and the school lab with Unix computer isn't available until the due date. What I have at home is Windows Vista and Mac OS X, so I'm wondering if you are able to run the Unix Terminal in Windows or Mac?

Also does anyone know how to change buffer sizes for testing?

Thanks.

[reed9]

You're best bet is probably to install a Unix variant in VirtualBox on Windows.

For the rest, it's against the rules to post homework questions.

[Izzy123]

thanks for the reply. I searched on the Internet and found this Cygwin

I'm not sure whether this one is better or the VirtualBox you gave me is better.

[reed9]

A virtual machine is probably better for your purposes, since you'll actually have a full operating system running, not just a port of x windows.

[Izzy123]

Thanks again for reply. I will try download it, but I still have one more question. My friend told me that Mac os x runs on unix... Is it true?

[reed9]

Mac is unix-based yes.

What Is Darwin (and How It Powers Mac OS X) - O'Reilly Media

[dE_logics]

Unfortunately mac doesn't use GCC (it will run though), it uses LLVM.

[Izzy123]

Found on apple website: Mac OS X is built on an industry-standard UNIX foundation. The Terminal application allows you to access the complete UNIX environment using standard commands, tools, and scripting languages.

[Izzy123]

So is it possible to run the code in my Mac os x terminal? Will it be the same as in Unix system?

[abarclay]

Yes, a mac is running unix, but it doesn't come with a compiler and installing a compiler on mac would probably be a total pain.
You say you have "a program that only runs in UNIX". I assume you have the source code for that program, and you will have to compile it. If you don't have the source, then you will need to find out what platform it is compiled for (linux x86, BSD, Solaris on sparc, etc.)

If you do have the source, then the following instructions should help.
Using a virtual machine is probably the best solution. You could use virtualbox, or you could download vmware player from vmware.com (it's free). That will give you the hypervisor, then you will need an actual virtual machine to run.
There are some images of various linux virtual machines available for download from here:
Some VMware images
I'd suggest CentOS 5.5 in 32 bit. Once you get it installed, setup the network connection in vmware to be either bridged or NAT.
Once you have that going, you will want to see if you have a compiler - just login as root and type gcc. If you get command not found, you'll need to install the compiler. You can do that using "yum install gcc".

Then you'll need to get the program source code into that virtual machine (probably using scp). Once it's in, you can compile and run it.

As the previous poster said, we can't really give you answers to your home work questions.