Linux on Windows

Cygwin
Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows
 * Cygwin

Portable Ubuntu Remix
an Ubuntu system running as a Windows application.
 * Portable Ubuntu Remix

Mount Drives
In windows
 * Administrative Tools
 * Computer Management
 * Disk Management
 * Select the Hard drive you wish to mount
 * Right Click and select "Change Drive Letter and Paths..."
 * Press "Add..."
 * Browse to folder to "Mount in the following empty NTFS folder:"

reference

 * Redhat to Ubuntu

andLinux
andLinux is a complete Ubuntu Linux system running seamlessly in Windows 2000 based systems
 * andLinux

coLinux
Both Portable Ubuntu Remix and andLinux use the coLinux core. Cooperative Linux is the first working free and open source method for optimally running Linux on Microsoft Windows natively.
 * coLinux

VMWare
Use free VMplayer and linux image.
 * VM Player free
 * VMware images free

Virtual Network Editor
vmnetcfg.exe

[x] Automatically choose an available physical network adapter to brige to VMnet0

Host Vitual Network Mapping VMnet1: VMware Network Adapter VMnet 1 VMnet8: VMware Network Adapter VMnet 8

DHCP VMnet1: subnet : 192.168.46.0 Netmask: 255.255.255.0 VMnet8: subnet : 192.168.192.0 Netmask: 255.255.255.0

NAT VMnet8 Gateway IP: 192.168.192.2 Netmask  : 255.255.255.0

Images
Most success with CentOS 5.3 image

Change keyboard for the console
Edit KEYTABLE in /etc/sysconfig/keyboard

VMWare tools
Run from within the VM itself

Install packages to build the kernel modules

Check the running kernel matches the kernel headers

If the two versions do not match, run

Find out where the kernel headers are (you may need this later)

Extract VMware Tools to /tmp/

Now run the installer

When asked Do you want to run vmware-config-tools.pl?, answer "Yes".


 * taken from http://www.thoughtpolice.co.uk/vmware/howto/centos-5-vmware-tools-install.html