Cygwin + PuTTY[1] in Windows is actually quite a reasonable compromise. It takes a little twiddling, but I can get to a local bash-prompt with a single click a

Cygwin + PuTTY[1] in Windows is actually quite a reasonable compromise. It takes a little twiddling, but I can get to a local bash-prompt with a single click and be hacking in emacs in no time. I find this to be about equally close to "standard" linux[2] as is OS X, although maybe that's just a factor of my inexperience. I use OS X, Ubuntu, and Debian at home... but at work I still prefer Windows 7 for some reason. [1] Especially if you use PuTTYcyg: http://code.google.com/p/puttycyg/ http://code.google.com/p/puttycyg/ EDIT: The main thing I miss with cygwin is command-line package management like apt, but OS X doesn't have that either. [2] Obviously subjective... I mean Debian/Ubuntu-style.