windows vista includes a unix subsystem in it, which in short lets u do posix/unix type stuff. i played briefly with it, and it feels a lot like the early days of running unix on mac with mach10. vista's Subsystem for Unix Applications feels to me like it's still in it's early days, despite being the evolution of what earlier versions of windows have known as SFU (Services For Unix), which itself has apparently been around for ages. anyway microsoft either acquired the interop folks or their unix, and built it into vista (as a downloadable component). it is recognized as the "interix" flavor of unix, for which peopl can develop and target for compiling and whatnot.

(this is not a tutorial, for that and further technical info i defer to the authoritative source: the learning center @ InteropSystems)

i use linux for an assortment of things, and i reckon (in theory) it'd be just swell to have bash instead of dos. i'm comfortable on the command line; often prefer it. if i didn't need putty, i could scp stuff straight from windows. i'm not in such a hurry to start compiling my familiar linux apps in vista/SUA/interix, but it's nice to kno it could be possible, and i'd be a step more likely to get further into shell scripting when the results could apply to "win/vista" as well..

right so i speak of SUA's theoretical potential, since beyond it's own install, i could not install the installer that bootstraps subsequent stuff; basically it seems the interop folks have provided a small package downloading/dependency handling tool, that won't install for me (and at least 2 other forum posters). it's likely attributed to a setting i hadn't selected during the initial install, which was supposed to be fixed with a couple registry tweaks, but i hafta question the purpose and representation of an 'option', if it's default and recommended absence inhibits fundamental functionality.

ya so i'll be revisiting this with some insight (praise the forums, amen), and in closing i feel i should mention that my interest and approach to all this is perhaps not what microsoft (and the interop folks) had in mind; i mean the business and enterprise aspects of SUA may do their thing, and microsoft never said they wanted to make unix in windows easy and personable. vista on the other hand, is the easiest and most personable windows yet, but if adobe would just step it up and release CS3 for linux, i think a lot of folks (myself included) wouldn't need windows anymore..