Where can I get a Unix emulator?

Installing a Unix emulator on your PC can provide you a useful tool for learning Unix, before you are ready to jump in and install a full version of Unix on your PC.

The best Unix emulator isn't a Unix emulator at all. The best Unix emulator is Cygwin, which is a complete Unix-like environment for Windows.

Cygwin consists of two parts:

A DLL (cygwin1.dll) which acts as a Unix API emulation layer providing substantial Unix API functionality.
A collection of tools, which provide Unix look and feel.

For more information, visit the Cygwin Home Page.

Learning the Unix Operating System

If you're new to Unix, this concise book will tell you just what you need to get started and no more. This fifth edition is the most effective introduction to Unix in print, covering Internet usage for email, file transfers, and web browsing. It's an ideal primer for Mac and PC users who need to know a little about Unix on the systems they visit. The new edition also contains many major and minor updates to help the reader navigate Unix's ever-expanding capabilities. In response to the popularity of Linux, the book now focuses on the popular bash shell preferred by most Linux users. A new chapter explains how to use ftp, pine for mail, and offers useful knowledge on how to surf the web. And the author has included tips throughout the text on security basics, especially in the Internet and networking sections. The book includes a completely updated quick reference card to make it easier for the reader to access the key functions of the command line.