Windows 1803 Update Turns on SSH

[eigenvector]

Let's take this moment to acknowledge PuTTY, which has been serving our SSH client needs in the former barren-*nix-utility wasteland of Windows since 1999.

Thanks, Simon Tatham & the maintainers of PuTTY.

[ocdtrekkie]

RIP my need for PuTTY going forward though, really. I guess I probably still need PuTTY for console cable maybe?

But yes, hat tip to one incredibly handy piece of software.

[pizza]

Same here, and I'd like to thank the developer(s) of KiTTY, too!

[NelsonMinar]

PuTTY is indeed wonderful, and may still have a future because of its particular TTY emulator. The Windows vt100 emulator built into the command console isn't awful, but still has some rough edges. PuTTY has been well sanded down.

And shout out also to SecureCRT which has been serving SSH client needs on Windows for even longer. Albeit commercial software, not open source.

[lloydatkinson]

It also has a terrible UI, considering it's a 19 year old product that seeminly never gets updated.

1) The IP input field is a text box; meaning I can type in 24324.3453.546.12321 and there's no mask.

2) Weird mess of modal and non-modal dialogs.

3) On a related note, if I open a shell window, close the main PUTTY window, but then the shell didn't manage to connect... it presents an error dialog and closes all the windows. How fucking annoying is that? You then have to open the start menu and run PUTTY again.

4) Copy/Paste is a total joke. Want to copy just a line of bit of text? No you get the whole 20 pages worth of scrollbuffer copied into it.

I really welcome this change. PUTTY had it's chance and they didn't even attempt to get a nice UI/UX.

[gowld]

The most prolific puzzle game maker and also the SSH savior!

[justherefortart]

Wow, I didn't realize putty was so new in 99. I just used it because I needed a set of good client tools on my windows box.

Many thanks to them, they made my life so much easier in the early 2000s.

[lostmsu]

No, the server does not run by default, as you'd assume from the title. Article just mentions, that the client is installed by default.

Actual title was editorialized.

[kingosticks]

Perhaps bizarrely I actually thought the title meant it disabled it, in the same way that "turning on" something/someone is taking a dislike to it.

[agorabinary]

Yes this is a misleading title. Please fix OP

[edwinksl]

Agree that the title is misleading.

[sigjuice]

The original title is way more accurate.

Windows 10 OpenSSH Client Installed by Default in April 2018 Update

[supermdguy]

Yeah, I thought it meant it was running an SSH server without the user's knowledge/consent.

[Florin_Andrei]

This is good. I'm just not very enthusiastic about the Windows terminal.

I've used PuTTY for a very long time and it works great. Its terminal is good too.

More recently I've tended to use Cygwin instead. Its default terminal, MinTTY, is as close as you can get to a Linux terminal on Windows. And then Cygwin also offers the openssh client, of course.

The notable thing about the recent related news, IMO, is not that openssh-client is shipped with Windows. It's that openssh-server is now an option. A server properly integrated with Windows, and officially supported, that's a good thing to have.

[andrewaylett]

MinTTY was originally based on PuTTY and while I may be a bit biased (having been sitting next to the developer in our day job in the period when he started developing it), I think it's actually a nicer terminal than pretty much any other I've met. If only for the feature wherein if you click on the last line in the terminal (including any wrapping) it'll work out how many characters are needed to move the cursor to that position and issue that many arrow-key presses.

[tambourine_man]

Having never really used Windows, except from a brief inter job as a kid, it seems to be getting better and better, to the point were I'm beginning to consider it as a viable alternative.

Unix + Photoshop is what I need and MS seem to be coming from the other side by embracing Linux more and more.

[commandlinefan]

I abandoned Windows 15 years ago; I switched over to Linux for about 7 years and then OS/X for 8 after that. I only returned to Windows this year, as it was required for a new job. Trust me: no, Windows is still as awful as it ever was.

[z3t4]

I switched over from Windows to Linux about a year ago and the only thing I miss is some games that doesn't run on Linux. Things you would probably miss in Windows: The console, apt-get, open source software, config files, able to fix stuff, support/community, ZFS, support for new technology programming languages and frameworks. And stuff you will not like in Windows: Editing the registry, finding stuff in the GUI that switch places from time to time. Installing random programs from the web and give them Admin rights, paying for those programs, getting spy updates you did not ask for, your OS showing ads and tracking your every step and then calling home to send data about you, old programs doesn't work.

[chmln]

You can run Photoshop in Wine. Maybe it won't be the latest CC version, but it should get the job done.

As someone who jumped to Linux 5 years ago, I would never consider running Windows again. Paying for a license to get my data harvested regardless and see ads on my lock screen, no thanks. Instead I donate that money to a handful of Linux organizations, distros, and devs to support an ecosystem I love being a part of.

[dugmartin]

I've been meaning to enable this but I have a lot of hosts setup in ~/.ssh/config that is used by MINGW64's ssh (installed via Git for Windows). Does anyone know if Window's ssh client will pick up that config (or if having both ssh clients will cause issues)?

[Zekio]

it will work if you add the ssh key to the ssh agent, I more or less copied my .ssh folder my WSL ubuntu install to my ~\.ssh folder and added my ssh key to the ssh agent :)

EDIT: How ever to get tab completion on what is in your config file you will need something like https://github.com/lukesampson/pshazz

[sp332]

Yup, you can either put it in %UserProfile%\.ssh\ssh_config or pass the -F <config_file> flag.

[JonathonW]

The Windows ssh client pulls its config and keys from %USERPROFILE%/.ssh/, as does the Git for Windows ssh-- they can and will share the same config as long as the config's valid for both (OpenSSH is the same release, but the Windows build uses LibreSSL instead of OpenSSL, so you could conceivably write a config file that isn't compatible with both, I think?).

[halfnibble]

It's about time. I was shocked when giving a "code along" presentation and found that none of my audience members with Windows 10 laptops could follow my presentation because the command prompt didn't have SSH. No SSH for crying out loud!