Interacting with a Linux Server on OS X

Hello,
I wanted to write to see if there are any programmers out there that work with Linux. I am taking a college course on programming in C++ and the class uses a Linux server that is accessed via SSH. The class uses Putty on Windows to access the server, but you also can use terminal on OS X. The only issue with terminal is voiceover does't interact properly with the command line interface. For example, if you open an editor it will not let you arrow up and down the program. So my question is what do you use to accomplish this and similar tasks? If you can't use the mac, what do you use? If you use native or virtual machine linux what is the best way to go about it?