Terminal Emulators for Windows?

termless asks: "I work in a situation where we code on Unix all day, yet our PCs run Win95. The default terminal emulator around the company is QVT/Term, which is not that good. What are your opinions on good terminal emulators for those of us stuck with using Win95 to do work on Unix boxes."

Comments

try terraterm

[The Madpostal Worker]

Terraterm is a free terminal emulator for windows, and has a plugin to do ssh. Unlike puTTY, you can resize the window(somthing that annoys me to no end with putty).
In the non-free area, SecureCRT is one of my favorite ssh clients (also a very nice terminal emulator) with much better support for terminals than others (like decent ANSI support).
In the not a terminal emulator area, Xwin32 is a nice Xserver for windows(hey, terminals arent great for everything). Also VNC is a pc-anywhere like app, that is free, and allows remote acess.

/*
*Not a Sermon, Just a Thought
*/

Virtual Network Computing (VNC) is so capable

[BitMan]

AT&T's Virtual Network Computing (VNC) is an excellent GPL licesned product to look at. When the server is run on UNIX systems, it allows you to run upto 99 independent sessions (more if you reconfigure/recompile it) on a single UNIX system. These sessions have their own window manager, programs, etc... tailored for the user running it. Essentially, you have a full X-Session running just like if the user was directly in front of the GUI console of the workstation. The user can then connect to the session from any VNC client, whether that client is MacOS, Windows, UNIX, DOS, Palm, etc...

Using VNC instead of a traditional X-Server on the PC side has several advantages. One is the fact that a user can disconnect and reconnect their viewer on another system and not have to logout. This also means that if the VNC viewer system (e.g., Windows) crashes, their entire X-Session is still running (and can be reconnected to). VNC also works fairly well over low-speed connections (as good as X11R6.3 extensions for low-speed connections), provided you minimize background images. An additional advantage is the fact that it runs on a single port (5900 + session #) which makes SSH tunneling extremely simple (side benefit: "low-cost, more secure" remote access than most "all ports open" commercial VPN software).

I work for a company whose applications are 90% UNIX based (Theseus Logic), and that's not likely going to change soon (as EDA tool vendors are choosing Linux over NT because of the true multiuser capabilities). We use Linux and Solaris sytems to run these applications. Although we are starting to dual-boot some of our NT Workstations on our desks with Linux (although my personal workstation and all our servers are 100% Linux ;-), most of our work is done via VNC over to our headless Linux and Solaris systems. With 512MB to 1GB of RAM, we can easily accomodate 10 engineers on each system with fairly intensive engineering applications running. This has additional benefits like accomodating node-locked licenses that normally won't remote display (to another system), but will work in a VNC session (because the VNC session appears simply as display "localhost:vncsession#.0").

VNC is also a great way to slowly move to Linux. Users can spend 6 months becoming familiar with Linux use via a remote VNC session, while still running Windows on their desktop. You can also use VNC to UNIX systems so any user can run those few (or many, like us ;-) UNIX applications when needed. Again, VNC is so simplistically powerful (especially on UNIX systems), you'll never run out of uses for it.

Again, instead of trying to deal with finding a costly terminal server program, or a PC-X-Server, evalute if you really need one. If your UNIX platform supports VNC (and I seriously doubt there is a major or even minor UNIX platform where it has not been ported to), just give your users a full UNIX session with all it's goodies. Best of all, with the VNC server and all its windows/apps running on the UNIX platform itself, you have 100% native execution.

[ Side Note: Unfortunately, since Windows is not a true multiuser system (and only a bastardized one with products like Terminal Server), you cannot use the VNC server in a reversed role (multiple users on a Windows NT system). Although you can use VNC like pcAnywhere (unified single session, remote and local user both see the same and control the keyboard/mouse simultaneously). And like pcAnywhere, VNC sessions can be shared, allowing remote training, etc... (even on UNIX, with multiple sessions running) ]

-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith