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General Discussion

The Terminal and operating systems in web development?

I noticed when I try to find anything online for the terminal training for web developers its only for Mac OS and Linux? I cant find anything for Windows? Does this mean that web developers all use Mac OS or Linux for developing? Should I get a Mac or Linux Operating system if I want to be a developer? I cant find anything on this subject online I just notice that all training modules never even mention windows at all in there training.

3 Answers

Ari Misha
Ari Misha
19,323 Points

Hiya there! Im a windows user as well. And i can totally relate to your question. Sometimes i feel frustrated as well when i see everything has to be about UNIX. The thing is most of the developers or contributors operate on UNIX systems. Thats why most of the tools and systems are compatible with Mac or Linux or Ubuntu. Also, developers working for Big startups and Enterprises prefers Linux , not even Mac. Hence the documentations for UNIX ad windows lack UNIX. Besides Linux is considered perfect for development environment for writing codes , SystemOps , Deployment and Continous Integration testing. Not just that, Linux provides you out of box features , especially for a team , to work on big projects.

~ Ari

Kevin Korte
Kevin Korte
28,148 Points

Hi Jeff,

Ari is correct, Windows is a very different environment for working in the terminal. If you'd like to get a Linux environment set up on your Windows computer, you can download virtual machine software.

You can download workstation for windows from VMware: https://www.vmware.com/products/workstation.html

Or you can download virtualbox: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

I've used both, currently have both installed on my windows computer at work, and I can't tell much of any difference in performance between the two.

You could then download Ubuntu (https://www.ubuntu.com/download) and install it in your virtual machine. You don't have to use Ubuntu, there are other flavors of Linux that would work as well - Ubuntu is just one of the more popular options used, and thus has a lot of information about it online.

All of this is free, forever. No trial versions.

This is what I do - my work insisted on using window computers, but wanted me to code (they're not a coding/tech company so they don't understand), so I installed Ubuntu on a virtual machine on my computer and work inside of that environment when I'm coding, and that satisfied their need for me to have a windows computer.

Hope that helps,

This is great, thank you for all the advice. I will take note of these things and apply them along my path, thanks.