The department labs are located in the basement of Allen. You can also access your Unix account from outside the department.
This quarter, the instructional servers are located behind the name: attu.cs.washington.edu. After starting Cygwin, you may login to your Unix account via the following command:
[rjpower@localhost rjpower]$ ssh attu
You can also access attu via the SSH-X attu shortcut located on the desktop. You'll get some annoying messages about ReflectionX the first time you do this - you can respond 'no' to them for now. Later on, you can modify the settings if necessary.
Cygwin is a Unix environment that runs underneath your Windows environment. You can start Cygwin from the desktop shortcut.
For those of you already familiar with Unix, you can find most of your favorite Unix programs from inside of Cygwin: bash, gcc, perl... for the most part, they operate like their Unix cousins.
Cygwin is a free product, and can be installed on your home computer quite easily. For some tips for home installations, click here.