PuTTY 0.61 Released

drmacinyasha writes "Simon Tatham announced Tuesday the official release of PuTTY 0.61 after four years of development. It brings a number of bug fixes and improvements, such as GSSAPI SSH-2 authentication, significantly faster SSH key exchanges, and even support for Windows 7's jump lists. Downloads are available from the project's homepage."

Comments

Link

[Goaway]

...and still no clickable links.

Re:Link

[bamf]

Use Kitty instead. Having said that, clickable links don't always work correctly.

Re:Link

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually wrote a ghastly patch to the nutty "urlhack" that western putty variants use, that fixes things like wide unicode shifting the url X letters to the left. URL underlining still underlines the wrong part of the screen, and non-ascii characters in the URL filter into gibberish, but at least now urls work after someone has copy-pasted chinese or japanese to the channel (I'm using putty for irssi).

There is a chinese closed-source putty variant with proper, bug-free clickable urls and improved CJK handling, whose name escapes me at this time. The interface is is in chinese and there's a heavy emphasis on GB/BIG5 encodings, making it rather unusable for everyone who is not chinese.

Re:Link

[Anonymous Coward]

The chinese variant is called PieTTy.

Re:Link

[Anonymous Coward]

another variant: http://ice.hotmint.com/putty/
Direct2D/DirectWrite rendering version: http://ice.hotmint.com/putty/d2ddw.html

Re:Link

[DemoLiter3]

And still no analog to ssh's "-D" option

Re:Link

[Anonymous Coward]

http://i1-win.softpedia-static.com/screenshots/PuTTY-Portable_23.png

Note the "Dynamic" option...

Re:Link

[arglebargle_xiv]

Use Kitty instead. Having said that, clickable links don't always work correctly.

That is, unfortunately, true of pretty much everything that Kitty provides as a value-add for Putty. Everything almost, but not quite, works. I really, really wanted to like Kitty (it adds a ton of neat features to Putty), but after about two weeks of frustration I went back to Putty.

Re:Link

[Anonymous Coward]

...and still no clickable links.

It's open source. You're free to contribute, rather than whin about it on slashdot.

Re:Link

[Anonymous Coward]

There was last time I used windows.
Go to the tunnels configuration, and use the Dynamic option.

Or search for 'putty socks' :-)

Re:Link

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it just me or is the release signed with the less secure snapshot key?

Re:Link

[Goaway]

People have, and now we have a wide variety of PuTTy forks, each one with some features you want, none with all of them.

This may be an improvement, but it's not much of one.

Re:Link

[DemoLiter3]

Oh, ok, I stand corrected.

Re:Link

[leadfoot]

Yes, this is what allows me to watch Youtube at work, amongst other things.

Re:Link

[snowgirl]

Yes, this is what allows me to watch Youtube at work, amongst other things.

Did you mean to post this as AC?

Four years

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't that make it PuTTY 12.9.9 at least?

Re:Four years

[mcvos]

That's what I thought. Wasn't PuTTY release-ready 10 years ago? At this pace, by the time they make an official 1.0 release, it's already obsolete.

Re:Four years

[Anonymous Coward]

It is PuTTY after all, not Firefox or Chrome. It's not a case of hype-driven development. It's about providing the best product possible, rather than goofing around with hyperinflated version numbers.

I liken it to the quiet employee who doesn't dress with the fanciest clothes nor boast constantly, but rather gets his work done efficiently and effectively. It turns out he has an absolutely massive penis, like in excess of 12" long. When hung like that, one doesn't need to act powerful, like all of the managers and executives with micropenises. When one has a pecker that huge, one inherently is powerful.

Re:Four years

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it quite disturbing that you base a man's worth on the size of reproductive organ. Why the penis obsession? Freud would have a field day with you.

Re:Four years

[Anonymous Coward]

IMO Freud deserves getting a huge dick up his arse for all the crap and bullshit he's spouted.

Re:Four years

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks, but it's only 11 inches (if you measure from the top -- none of that "measure from the asshole" bullshit).

Re:Four years

[vegiVamp]

1.0 is when the architect (-slash-developer) thinks it does everything he originally set out for the application to do. Increments are fixes and minor features. Major version increment is when the architect thinks it does everything he set out for that version.

THAT is how version numbers work, not "oooh, the competition is already up to 9.0 and we're still 3.6, let's bump it up with a few bugfix releases".

0.x does not mean it's going to be obsolete or even unstable, just that it doesn't do everything it was meant to, yet.

Re:Four years

[mcvos]

Original vision? Lots of software never meets the original vision, especially if it comes from a particularly visionary person.

Most software actually uses release numbers like this:

1.0: It's good enough to release. It's not a test version anymore. It's not too buggy, and all the vital features are in it. Though there could still be a lot of room for improvement.
+ 0.1: New features were added.
+ 0.0.1: Bugfix release.
2.0: Thorough redesign. A significant departure from 1.0.

I appreciate your jab at Mozilla's recent Firefox version number fuck-up, though.

Re:Four years

[Anonymous Coward]

my penis isn't exactly 12 inchs long... it just seems that way

Re:Four years

[tehcyder]

It is PuTTY after all, not Firefox or Chrome. It's not a case of hype-driven development. It's about providing the best product possible, rather than goofing around with hyperinflated version numbers.

I liken it to the quiet employee who doesn't dress with the fanciest clothes nor boast constantly, but rather gets his work done efficiently and effectively. It turns out he has an absolutely massive penis, like in excess of 12" long. When hung like that, one doesn't need to act powerful, like all of the managers and executives with micropenises. When one has a pecker that huge, one inherently is powerful.

LOL let me guess you are quiet at work, dress boringly and don't boast much?

Re:Four years

[Anonymous Coward]

Like it or not, often the penis is attached to the asshole.

Re:Four years

[TheLink]

Why does that matter? Don't tell me you're one of those waiting for it to turn 1.0 to use it.

You want to see whether something is OK to use you look at the source code, if that's not available or practical, you look at the track record, release notes, past/unfixed vulnerabilities, and "word of mouth". And you see how often you can get it to crash[1].

You certainly don't use the version number.

[1] Putty does crash, esp if you use the tunnelling stuff a lot.

Re:Four years

[gbjbaanb]

you definitely don;t use the version number, unless you're running Microsoft software and want to wait for the 3rd release as that's always the one that works. Even then, MS has cottoned on to this and releases products with all kinds of arbitrary version numbers to confuse you into buying not-ready releases.

Re:Four years

[allanw]

Well that took an unexpected turn.

Re:Four years

[Anonymous Coward]

Chiefly in case of apple users. Steve's dick and users' assholes.

Re:Four years

[mcvos]

I don't wait for 1.0, I just think it's silly to keep something in perpetual beta. Though that does seem to be the thing to do, nowadays.

Re:Four years

[TheLink]

But it's not that stable yet. If you use it to tunnel browser proxy connections, from time to time you'll notice it crashing.

Whereas I don't recall the openssh client crashing on me.

It doesn't bother me that much, the hackers would be better off targeting web browsers.

Who uses standard PuTTY?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell me when PuTTYTray gets an update instead.

PowerShell Integration?

[Doc Ruby]

I'd love to get PuTTY ssh/scp functions integrated directly into PowerShell. Instead of a separate PuTTY GUI, just use PowerShell as the shell to connect to remote hosts with PuTTY, and file transfer with scp.

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[TheRaven64]

Why not just install OpenSSH? Then you can run the ssh and scp command-line tools as normal. If you install Cygwin, they're probably there already. The advantage of PuTTY is that it includes its own terminal emulator, which is important because the Windows one sucks (or, did when I last used Windows - Win2K - it may be better now).

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[bmo]

The thing about Putty is that it's a self contained executable, which means you can throw it on the flash drive that's already hanging from your key ring. No need for cygwin or whatever. Nothing to install on the host system.

Some of us have full Linux distributions there and various Windows tools for fixing busted Windows machines.

Where's yours?

--
BMO

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[TheRaven64]

Some of us have full Linux distributions there and various Windows tools for fixing busted Windows machines. Where's yours?

I haven't used Windows since 2003, so I have no more need for a flash drive for fixing them than I have a need for a smithy to make replacement horse shoes.

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[jabjoe]

I find the PuTTY terminal isn't much better. Mintty is the best I found for Windows. Shame it's not like Guake, but stuff I found to do that on Windows hasn't been functional.

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[jabjoe]

That is how I do still use PuTTY from time to time. When it's not your machine, it's polite to only use PuTTY rather than install anything, and if you don't have admin, it's the only option. But I don't often do this, I use cygwin+mintty as preference, like on my work machine.

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't plink and pscp what you're looking for?

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[yomammamia]

I greatly respect what cygwin is and does but ultimately it's unpleasantly bloated when you only need a handful of ported programs. After using the putty terminal editor I can't touch cygwins. When using cygwin I set up the sshd service so that I can use putty for it on localhost instead.

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[Anonymous Coward]

I like MobaXterm better than PuTTY (after having used PuTTY for many years!)

http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you realize that mintty is basically the PuTTY terminal with a few improvements? It's the same code.

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[TheRaven64]

Self satisfaction because I don't keep tools for maintaining technology that I don't use lying around? If that's your benchmark for self satisfaction, you must lead a very tedious life.

I also don't have an Amiga boot floppy a System/z recovery console lying around. Nor to I expect everyone else to keep recovery tools for the operating systems that I use handy.

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[TheRaven64]

And therefore everyone should have Windows recovery tools? Some of us here actually make our living doing computer stuff, like writing software. Therefore we have VM images containing multiple compilers - where's yours?

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[Ash-Fox]

. After using the putty terminal editor I can't touch cygwins. When using cygwin I set up the sshd service so that I can use putty for it on localhost instead.

What's wrong with Cygwin's mintty?

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[Anonymous Coward]

MobaXterm uses mintty as its terminal, which in turn is based on parts of PuTTY, so in a way you're still using PuTTY. :)

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[pmontra]

When I was still using Windows as a desktop client I liked the way Putty gave me a quite good ssh experience. It's worse than openssh but it was the best one you could get on Windows. I'm still recommending it to people that work on Windows. It's much easier for them that using Cygwin or migrating to Linux as I did.

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[bertok]

There are benefits to a native PowerShell module, like discoverability, tab-complete, strong-typing, support for common and preference parameters, session variables (e.g.: "trust this SSH key for this session only"), object-oriented result sets, and a bunch of other things.

The elegant way to support SCP in PowerShell would be to write a PowerShell virtual filesystem provider. This would allow scripts to use all of the built-in PowerShell commands on the remote filesystem as if they were normal mounted drives. For example, dir, copy, and del, would all work. It's much easier writing a PowerShell provider than a full filesystem driver, so even for a complex user-mode protocol like SCP it wouldn't be too difficult. Similarly, the SSH key store could be treated like a virtual drive too, just like the built-in Certificate provider.

Alternatively, the even simpler solution is to do something like what VMware did for copying files onto ESXi servers, like Copy-VMGuestFile, and Copy-DatastoreItem.

SSH wouldn't be as easy to wrap, but I suppose it would be possible to create a set of commands such as Invoke-SSHCommand, Enter-SSHSession, and the like, with analogy to Invoke-Command and Enter-PSSession. The problem is that PowerShell doesn't really have a built-in concept of a non-PowerShell session, so a bit of wheel-reinventing would be needed to get a complete set of commands.

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[MrNemesis]

Cygwin + openSSH + minTTY is an utter godsend on windows; minTTY is the best terminal emulator I've used on windows by a long shot and IMHO knocks the one included with putty into a cocked hat.

Why MS chose to use the same god-awful terminal for their all-singing all-dancing powershell is beyond me.

http://code.google.com/p/mintty/

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[jabjoe]

Then those improvements make all the difference. Plus, you can use it to use normal ssh, normally.

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[Anonymous Coward]

But other people might need such tools - so why dictate to them how they should do things? I'm trying to be nice about this, but you're coming across as kinda arrogant...

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[jabjoe]

Here here!

I didn't know Powershell still uses the crap default terminal!
Haven't gone near it as I'm happy with cygwin and MinTTY, plus I try and avoid Windows specific stuff.

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[TheRaven64]

I replied to someone who said 'where's your?' implying that everyone should have such a set of tools. I don't have one, because I have no need of one. I also don't have a socket wrench set, nor a torx screwdriver set. Some people have need for these tools. The assumption that everyone does is arrogant, and that is what I was replying to.

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[SteveFoerster]

I don't find that. To be fair, he didn't start it, he was asked a sort of obnoxious question and responded reasonably.

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[TheRaven64]

I'm rude because I don't think that everyone should be required to have a set of recovery tools for the operating system that the person I replied to uses?

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[VolciMaster]

Some of us have full Linux distributions there and various Windows tools for fixing busted Windows machines. Where's yours?

I haven't used Windows since 2003, so I have no more need for a flash drive for fixing them than I have a need for a smithy to make replacement horse shoes.

Funny - I know loads of people who still need a "smithy to make replacement horseshoes"

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[TheRaven64]

And, if they do, then I'd expect them to have one - or, at least, the use of one. I wouldn't expect them to go around expecting everyone else to have one too.

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[benjymouse]

Here here!
I didn't know Powershell still uses the crap default terminal!

PowerShell is a "hostable" shell, meaning that it can be integrated into a host (.NET) application and directly share in-memory objects and hook into the host user interface. PowerShell comes with two apps for hosting it: The PowerShell console and the ISE (Integrated scripting environment). What you are referring to as the "crap default terminal" is probably the PowerShell console. I don't know why it is crap, though. If you are thinking lack of SSH, PowerShell has a much more elegant and hassle-free way to remotely execute scripts, commands, functions and even remote jobs and events.

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well aren't you just special?

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[defaria]

No install Cygwin and also mintty. Much better terminal emulator.

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[defaria]

You can also throw Cygwin on a thumb drive. With Cygwin you get not only ssh but ftp, bash, perl, X, etc. and all of them are designed to work together just like Linux.

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[vegiVamp]

What's particularly good about guake, except the quick hide/show? I just installed it (admittedly 0.4.1) and it doesn't seem particularly exciting, although I can see the value if you only occasionally do terminal work and/or only have one screen.

What am I missing?

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[idontgno]

Well, right or wrong, perception of perfect strangers is based on "playing the odds", and the overwhelming majority of slashdotters use Windows, even if they hate it. So you are the exception, which I'm sure you realize.

So, bringing it back to blacksmithing, yeah, most people here have horses.

You really don't need us to confirm your fundamental superiority; you do a fine job of that by yourself.

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah let's install 100 megs of runtimes and libraries instead of a 472k portable executable.

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[Dr_Barnowl]

It's crap because it's hosted in the same old cmd.exe that MS has shipped for years and shares many of it's default behaviours.

* You can't resize it
** You can resize the window smaller, but the actual terminal stays the same size
* It doesn't do copy-on-select, only copy-on-right-click
** This is very annoying when you are used to copy-on-select and middle-click to paste from other environments
* Doesn't support all the keyboard shortcuts that you're used to on other terminals
** Is it possible to add some of this via snap-ins? Was very impressed with the Autocomplete one.
* Operations that you expect to do normal things do odd things
** e.g. - try doing an svnadmin dump > file in a Powershell. Discover to your disgust that your dump file has been totally ruined because Psh has thoughtfully converted the STDOUT from svnadmin it into UTF-16 with a byte-order-mark.
** This is more a Psh thing, than a console thing though - cmd.exe does this properly

When you are used to the terminal emulators that ship with POSIX systems, it's rather frustrating. It's a nice scripting environment - I even think it's superior to bash + GNU for a lot of tasks, but the default terminal for it still blows chunks.

That said... things from cmd.exe / Powershell I'd like to see in bash include...

* Support for cd -N ; where N is a number from the stack of folders recently accessed, also cd - cd + to move up and down stack
** Think this is an enhancement from PSCX
* F7 hotkey that shows your recent command history and lets you choose one to either run now, or edit

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[Jeng]

So which tools do you think that somebody should have on their flash drive?

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[Medievalist]

If you are thinking lack of SSH, PowerShell has a much more elegant and hassle-free way to remotely execute scripts, commands, functions and even remote jobs and events.

Clearly I need to know more about powershell, since I haven't found anything remotely like that in it. Can you toss me a few links or some examples?

Using SSH, I can execute massive, intricate processes that interoperate across multiple hosts running multiple operating systems with perfect forward security, and I can do this right from my head on the CLI without touching a text editor. I've never seen anything like SSH's remote capabilities in Powershell.

But like I said, I'm pretty ignorant where PS is concerned - a situation I'd like to remediate!

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[tehdaemon]

Some bash features you may be interested in...

to go to the previous recently accessed folder : cd -
(yes, this is much less than what you asked for, but that much is already there)

to show your recent commands : history N
where N is how many commands to display. It is fairly easy to copy/paste the command you want to run/edit from there.

T

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[mchawi]

You can use PowerShell and plink to write PowerShell scripts. You can login to a router, run commands, go into enable mode and tftp off a backup for instance.

You can also do something semi-dynamic by dumping the output to a script file with PowerShell and using plink to run the commands in the script file.

Not a built-in cmdlet, but you can still accomplish what you want pretty easily.

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[bmo]

Putty
Cygwin
Knoppix
CCleaner
Hijack This
Malwarebytes
A virus scanner running under Knoppix even if only to demonstrate to the owner of said computer that it is truly and fully fucked.
A Windows password reset tool
A backup program (this can be under Knoppix)
Gparted
Tools for killing Koobface
Windirstat - "my drive is full and I don't know why"

Etc.

A lot of that stuff is for people who insist "don't format the machine"

The real way to fix a Windows machine is to nuke and pave, as argued here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc512587.aspx

--
BMO

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[theCoder]

* Support for cd -N ; where N is a number from the stack of folders recently accessed, also cd - cd + to move up and down stack

I'm not sure I'd want the shell to always remember all my directories -- I probably go into a lot of directories over the life of a shell. Maybe with a limit, like the last 10 directories.

But you can already do this to some extent with the existing directory stack using pushd and popd. I usually alias pd to pushd so it's as convenient as cd. Then you just pd into a directory.

As to the history, try using ctrl+r sometime. It's a great way to search through your bash history by typing part of the command you're looking for. Of course, you can also run history to get the full history output.

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[Anonymous Coward]

c:\users\%username%\virtual machines

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is crap because of the lack of keybindings to manipulate and move around the command line.

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[benjymouse]

* You cannot resize it *dynamically*. You can most certainly set the size to something different using the properties. You can also set the window and buffer sizes from script.

* It does copy-on-. Set it to use "quick edit" mode. You can set it on the shortcut as a default

* Which keyboard shortcuts?
** Are you thinking of the PowerTab extension (http://powertab.codeplex.com/). That surely is impressive.
** Yes, the powershell ui can be customized.

* Operations do odd things?
** Check your $OutputEncoding. Default should be ascii encoding

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[benjymouse]

Clearly I need to know more about powershell, since I haven't found anything remotely like that in it. Can you toss me a few links or some examples?

The Invoke-Command (built-in alias icm) takes -Session and/or -Computer parameters. If you invoke a command like
icm {ps} -cn host1,host2,host3

* You are simultaneously executing the ps command on several hosts.

* The results are marshalled back to your current console, but a property (hostname) is added to each returned item (remember, pipelines are object-oriented in PS) so that your script can tell the results apart.

* Authentication and authorization and encryption is automatic (no need to exchange SSL keys).

* Using WBEM which is a SOAP protocol which makes it much easier to route through firewalls.

* The {ps} is actually a script block. This block can be arbitrary complex (contain loops, branches, function defs etc). It is *not* just a text string passed to a remote shell.

* The command can also take a script file which is then parsed and sent as a script block.

* If multiple hosts are used, the processing is parallel (simultaneous). Fan-out remoting. The command will wait for all remote commands to complete (successful or failed) before continuing. Results are consolidated in a single result stream. Results are automatically serialized/deserialized from the remote computers retaining structure.

* The script block can define parameters which can be passed like e.g. icm {param($pname) ps $pname} -cn host1,host2 -arg svc*. An elegant way to marshal input object without hassling with quoting and escaping. And remember, these are full-fledged (serialized) objects, not just text strings.

* The Invoke-Command cmdlet also takes a -Job switch. -Job will cause the commands to execute as remote jobs, i.e. they will execute on the remote hosts but they'll be represented by local job objects and can be manipulated transparently.

For simple ssh style remoting (jumping to a remote console) you use Enter-PSSession (built-in alias etsn). Again, this will by default use your current credentials and establish a secured (authenticated and encrypted) connection.

You can step in and out of sessions. A remote "session" retains the environment (variables, state etc) between invocations. If you don't want to "enter" into the session to issue commands, the Invoke-Command (see above) also allows the remote command to be issued from the "outside".

There is plenty more, e.g. implicit remote commands, remote events etc. In general they have been implemented with transparency, i.e. they work seamlessly across machine boundaries because of automatic serialization/deserialization. For instance, PowerShell has a Write-Progress cmdlet which can be used to display a progress indicator for long running scripts. If executed remotely, the status messages are still marshalled back to the console and updates the progress indicator on the console, not on the remote computer.

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't fix Windows machines on a regular basis so if I were to carry a USB stick around it would either get broken or lost before I used it. I did in fact have one that went on my keyring, it just stopped working after a while and I haven't felt the need to replace it, after all if I need a computer with *nix tools I have a N900 in my pocket, but I'm not going to carry a USB cable round to connect it (micro USB isn't common enough to be a given) so I don't bother keeping any software tools for Windows on it.

Re:PowerShell Integration?

[Doc Ruby]

I'd love to be able to use a native PS module to ssh from a Windows host to a Linux host, and put the IO of the PS client into a PS pipeline. Object result sets in and out of my Linux session would be great.

Though I'd prefer a Linux PowerShell that adds object pipelines to bash, and to the Linux commands I run like ssh. I don't like (or generally use) Windows or its shell, but I love PowerShell.

Thanks!

[Anonymous Coward]

The authors would be millionaires if they charged for this. I see this software used many many places, so thanks.

Re:Thanks!

[Anonymous Coward]

... or it could be so frequently used just because it's free and open? There are plenty of commercial SSH alternatives if you want those.

Re:Thanks!

[Dark$ide]

The authors would be millionaires if they charged for this. I see this software used many many places, so thanks.

I use PuTTY every day. So thanks as well.

Re:Thanks!

[Anrego]

Or even offered a donation link! I don't use it much any more (most machines I'm on are running linux or solaris)... but I'd donate just because of how much I used it in the past!

I love how low-key the whole thing is. It's like, a hugely ubiquitous tool that's been around (and still works) for like a decade... and it doesn't even have it's own domain! Any other project with even half the success of putty would be selling tshirts and cups and have spots at conventions by now.

Re:Thanks!

[WuphonsReach]

Yeah, there are some things that products like SecureCRT just do better then PuTTY. Like a tabbed interface, better session management, the ability to do XMODEM/ZMODEM file transfers without switching over to WinSCP. Better logging capability, better interface for working with session profiles, etc.

I use both PuTTY and SecureCRT, but spend 90% of my time in SecureCRT.

(Note - I haven't yet looked at what PuTTY 0.61 improved upon.)

Re:Thanks!

[Anonymous Coward]

My machine here at work has two terminal emulators, PuTTY (hanging around in my user directory) and Attachmate.

One of these two programs is several hundred megs, crashes when you try to change printers during a telnet session, and requires you REBOOT WINDOWS on occasion if it locks up (WinXP, mandated). ...I'll stick with the other, regardless of cost.

Re:Thanks!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you really really want to donate, they have a paypal account for that sort of thing. http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/faq.html#faq-donations

Re:Thanks!

[Anonymous Coward]

The irony is that if you look at the source code for PuTTY (I did a port of it to .net), you will discover it was a horrific hacky mess. I ended up rewriting significant parts of it. It is possible the new versions are a complete rewrite, and thus why they took so long.

Re:Thanks!

[Anonymous Coward]

The authors would be millionaires if they charged for this.

Nah. Someone would've written a free one instead.

Re:Thanks!

[jgrahn]

I love how low-key the whole [putty] thing is. It's like, a hugely ubiquitous tool that's been around (and still works) for like a decade... and it doesn't even have it's own domain!

It's like things *should* work. One task, one long-term goal, well executed. No need to make it a bloody *carnival*.

Re:Thanks!

[mr_3ntropy]

GPs post was indeed excellent. Now If you

spend hundreds of hours every year maintaining MS-Windows domain authentication and authorization infrastructures

surely you have heard of Kerberos Tickets, Windows Integrated Authentication, Impersonation, WMI etc? (plus now there is WinRm and CredSSP) And surely it was obvious that in the GPs scenario, the terminal user is on the same AD domain as the remote server and is added to the appropriate domain or local security groups.

Re:Thanks!

[Medievalist]

It seemed like a good idea to mention that a certain amount of setup and maintenance was being glossed over.

I have no problem try this

[NSN A392-99-964-5927]

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html

Re:I have no problem try this

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe it was a reference to a feature some like to see - the terminal making anything that looks like a URL clickable. Personally I think this is out of the purview of a terminal, but whatever.

Re:I have no problem try this

[arglebargle_xiv]

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html

The whole site seems to be slashdotted at the moment. Putty must have a pretty impressive user base...

Re:I have no problem try this

[GuruBuckaroo]

Putty's user base: "All of them."

Re:I have no problem try this

[webmistressrachel]

You're a fucking dumb idiot, and you and people like you should be exterminated forthwith.

Not only do you hold society back by bullying and ridiculing people for being cleverer than you,people like you skew the averages so that genuinely average people are prevented from achieving their potential by our stupid "lowest common denominator" and "learn by rote, don't THINK!!!" education systems.

I realised that Earth wasn't the planet for me the first time I was bullied at primary school for being "too intelligent" or "too serious".

Then I left school and discovered that employers have the same attitude to critical thinking and intelligence. And people wonder why I'm a bitter trolling bitch???

Re:I have no problem try this

[Random_Goblin]

i believe the parent was making a reference to this film; in the loop

Re:I have no problem try this

[Unkyjar]

You just made this little subthread the most entertaining thing on slashdot today.

Self-deprecating version numbers are the suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, we get it: you're not comfortable saying it's "release quality" yet. But *%@# it's been 4 years since you bothered to release an update; that means it's pretty darn stable. Go ahead and take the plunge and call it 1.0. Qualify that as BETA or something if you have to, but please stop calling it 0.xx.

Re:Self-deprecating version numbers are the suck

[CrazyBusError]

I believe there are other reasons for not going to version 1.

Hopefully the esteemed Mr Tatham won't mind if I quote him directly, but in 2007 he wrote this about why puTTY wasn't version 1 yet:

But that's not primarily what's holding back a 1.0 release. The real thing I want to do first is to sort out the data storage: there are quite a few features on the wish list which would require a revamp of that, such as

- ability to store some settings in HKEY_CURRENT_USER and others in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, so that a sysadmin could set up some default saved sessions and a default host key cache which would then be the starting point for each user's personal configuration

- inheritable saved sessions (so that when I change, say, my font preference in Default Settings it automatically propagates to all my other sessions _except_ those in which I've specifically asked for a non-default font)

- storing configuration in a disk file as an alternative to the registry (so that people can carry around PuTTY plus their config file on a USB stick)

- ability to configure all PuTTY's options from the command line (rather than having to do a lot of them by the cumbersome method of creating a saved session and using -load).

Now I'm not saying I want to have _implemented_ all those features before 1.0, but I want to have made a commitment to a data storage format which is capable of supporting them. Currently PuTTY's data storage only tries to be upward- compatible, meaning that you can upgrade PuTTY and it'll still work with your old settings. Use an older PuTTY with newer settings, and you're on your own. My goal is that within the 1.0 series, the data storage should be compatible in _both_ directions. (Not because I anticipate people deliberately downgrading PuTTY, although it's been known occasionally, but because I can easily imagine people using different versions on two machines which happen to be sharing a network-stored configuration.)

I use mintty and cygwin instead

[jabjoe]

Much nicer console and gives just standard command line ssh, which is all I want/need. I stopped using Putty years ago...
During the heavy snow in the UK, I was regularly checking how bad it was at home with:

ssh user@server "ffmpeg -r 15 -f video4linux2 -i /dev/video0 -f matroska pipe:" | ffplay pipe

Which is exactly what I would have done if my work machine was Linux not Windows. Guess it depends what you want a ssh client on Windows for.

Re:I use mintty and cygwin instead

[ledow]

Cygwin is an horrendous suite to work with. Really. Just go look at how you're supposed to guarantee what version of the Cygwin DLL your applications end up using (Hint: Delete any cygwin1.dll that's not in the System directory and hope-to-god that's the most up-to-date). It can't even co-reside with itself so the second you load up a Cygwin app it's a gamble as to what version of the DLL it will find / use and whether it's even compatible any more, and what it'll do to applications you run later on. I take it that you don't do a lot of development with Cygwin compilers because it's a minefield, and after a while, you give anything to remove that Cygwin dependency (which is basically why MinGW exists, for instance).

Also, the tools are horrendously slow. I have a Cygwin development environment that I've carried for a long while and it's stupidly slow when it comes to anything half-decent, anything that forks, etc. not to mention compatibility issues every time you have to move to a new Windows version, etc.

PuTTY, in comparison, is a single file, no dependencies, works fine and everywhere and does 99% of what you want (the example you show is the most esoteric and pointless thing I could think of to show off a console, and relies mainly on the fact that you have an ffplay that can read from pipes on Windows - nothing to do with the console, as such).

A console is a shell client. That's it. It doesn't need to integrate with my current OS / desktop, or form perfect pipes, or do anything more than necessary - it just needs to show me a remote shell on another computer so I can issue commands and see responses. PuTTY does that and does it brilliantly - so much so that I've ditched lots of serial-port comms utilities in favour of PuTTY instead because it also support just raw comms. It's also so incredibly tiny and portable (unlike your Cygwin installation) that I can literally carry it everywhere.

The only thing I *hate* about PuTTY is that all the messing about with keys should really be simplified a lot without having to resort to extra utilities and third-party addons.

Re:I use mintty and cygwin instead

[jabjoe]

Your right, I don't develop with cygwin. I just use it as a user. Anything I install, I install from it's repositories, and so far, it's always worked fine. I have compiled one or two things with it, and that's all just worked like it was a real Unix. This doesn't negate what you are saying, but I'm using it as an isolated environment and not trying to redistribute anything. If I did, I would try to redistrubute through the package management system, so may not hit the issues you have. But perhaps the repositories aren't controled like real Unix ones and I've just been lucky, I've not looked.

I've not found speed an issue for my uses.

I use the Unix like environment because I prefer it (and it has history longer than that session), but the standard console (Window's running cygwin) is terrible. MinTTY is amazing when compared with the standard console. So am I going to use PuTTY to connect to a real Unix environment? No. I'm going to use normal ssh like I was on a Unix environment. I did use PuTTY and normal Windows userland for quite a while, but I found cygwin + MinTTY works best for me. The piping stuff is an example where I can forget I'm on Windows and just do as I would normally. Don't get me wrong, I use PuTTY when on other people's machines, or don't have admin, but if it's a Windows machine that's for me, I'm going to setup and use MinTTY + cygwin because it gives me more than PuTTY.

I just wish it's package management was more like APT. I miss apt-get when on cygwin.

Re:I use mintty and cygwin instead

[jmitchel!jmitchel.co]

I've been using cygwin for almost its entire lifetime. It has pluses and minuses. For the most part using the rxvt shell lets me feel like I'm on a proper computer, except when I do some file operation that hangs cygwin for 30 seconds, or windows is under load and it takes 30 seconds to get a command prompt. Maybe mintty will solve some of the cygwin problems I have - I'll try it when I go to work tomorrow. But as a person who spends all day at work every day logged into multiple random customer servers via SSH, putty just works for me. It's stable. It's light weight. The selection behavior is almost always right. It's self contained and small, so I don't have to worry about some piece in the chain of cygwin breaking and stranding me at an inconvenient moment.

nice

[hey]

putty makes the world work. I spend 90% of my day in putty... ssh-ed from a Windows box to various Linux boxes. It has never crashed.
I also love the download page where you can grab just the .exe by http or ftp. If only everything else could be so perfect and simple.

Re:nice

[Anonymous Coward]

0.60 with heavy tunneling and/or X11 forwarding crashes like a beast.

Re:nice

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just install linux on you own box and run the various windows programs you might need in wine?

Re:nice

[Anonymous Coward]

Completely agree, putty is my life! ;)

Re:nice

[Anonymous Coward]

PuTTY may very well be the most important/used windows software, at least for us slashdot-reading geeks...
I don't often log into win

Re:nice

[roman_mir]

as opposed to Ubuntu 11.04, which can't hold an ssh session for 10 minutes before the entire term window goes to hell and never comes back....

Re:nice

[Anonymous Coward]

You might find the OpenSSH FAQ helpful.

Re:nice

[Derek Pomery]

Get out of unity ASAP.
Choose Classic or Classic w/o Effects.

Re:nice

[sparkz]

I hugely prefer to work in GNOME, but when forced to use MS Windows, PuTTY is the only thing that makes it bearable!

Re:nice

[roman_mir]

What are you talking about? Dumped unity the moment it appeared, it's classic without effects, and that's what it does.

Re:nice

[roman_mir]

No, it's not helpful. It's not inactivity that causes ssh to freeze here, it's an active session, I am typing in it, all of a sudden BAM, it's gone. The screen is there, but there is no activity, no way to terminate, suspend or exit shell, nothing, the entire window has to be killed.

Re:nice

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu 11.04

I think I found your problem.

Re:nice

[Sectoid_Dev]

Because some of work in corporate environments where desktops are Windows only.

Re:nice

[tlhIngan]

I hugely prefer to work in GNOME, but when forced to use MS Windows, PuTTY is the only thing that makes it bearable!
 

Funny that I'm the opposite - I detest working at a Linux desktop - just so many things are "off" graphics wise (bad fonts?) that it turns me off. Much prefer working on Linux using SMB sharing my project code and through SSH I do my builds and such. My "native" setup uses Cygwin with OpenSSH, but in a pinch I use PuTTY (usually when it's someone else's machine) purely because it's small, portable and easily removed if need be. I do keep an X server around for the few times I need something graphical done.

I don't know what it is - just that font rendering and spacing on Linux has always seemed "bad" to me compared with OS X or Windows.

Re:nice

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you not enabled anti-aliased fonts in your window manager?

Re:nice

[just_another_sean]

You sure you're not accidentally hitting Ctrl-S?

Re:nice

[roman_mir]

dude, seriously...

Re:nice

[just_another_sean]

No not seriously. :-)

I'm sorry, I just thought of it because the first time that happened to me I had no idea what to do. I just thought the terminal froze, killed it and reopened it. Took me months to stumble across a man page or some such that explained Ctrl-S and Ctrl-Q to me.

Anyway, sorry again, it was a cheap joke that probably read like a cheap shot at you.

Re:nice

[Derek Pomery]

Oh. Huh.
I assumed by "goes to hell and never comes back" you meant "crashes or sends the terminal window off screen where I can't get it"

I'm using Classic too. No odd terminal behaviour.
Seems same as ever really.

Re:nice

[jmitchel!jmitchel.co]

I'm sure he has. I don't know about your post's parent, but Gnome suffers from random imperfections and features moving or disappearing at inapt moments. I used to be 100% Gnome / Linux, but by day's end the only place where I'll have it installed is in a small VM I keep for "picture" web browsing.

Re:nice

[bufordt13]

I'm not sure what problem you're having but I'm using Ubuntu 11.04, with Unity, and I've had ssh sessions open for weeks at a time without issue.

Tabs ...

[Jaro]

I still wish PuTTY would have native tabs without the need for the Connection Manager which is way to bloated for my need (tabs). I just need PuTTY, Pageant and then automatic tabbing when there is another PuTTY window already open.

Re:Tabs ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if you don't mind starting a few connections from a specific linux box, there is always 'screen' that does exactly that. Plus, you get to have 'screen -D -RR' to reconnect to a lost session, tabs and all.

Re:Tabs ...

[d.the.duck]

AMEN! AMEN! The docking is nice too. Connection Manager is okay, but has all sorts of weird issues.

because some of us have to work with approved apps

[dutchwhizzman]

That's why...

Simon Tatham is my hero

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't always run Windows, but when I do, I prefer PuTTY

PuTTY Tray FTW.

[Kwpolska]

I like PuTTY Tray more. Can someone tell me when it will be updated?

Re:PuTTY Tray FTW.

[Anonymous Coward]

It will be updated in 6 years.

Re:PuTTY Tray FTW.

[Any Web Loco]

Doesn't look like it will be sadly. From the download page:

Please note: I have decided to stop development of the PuTTY Tray patch, and I have no plans to resume it at any point in the future.

Re:PuTTY Tray FTW.

[Anonymous Coward]

There's FuTTY, which contains the PuTTY Tray patch.. http://code.google.com/p/futty/

Re:PuTTY Tray FTW.

[thebasa]

booo! that sucks i have my tunnel open all day and i like that it's not in the taskbar

Win 7 Support

[frap]

Apparently it has Win 7 support, especially for jumplists, but I don't see it...

Puzzles

[gringer]

And for those people who don't have the intellectual desire to tinker away at a shell, Simon Tatham has a few puzzles for you:

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/

I accept no responsibility for loss of work months due to the use of these puzzles.

Re:Puzzles

[Anonymous Coward]

it's this sort of random linking to awesome gems like those puzzles that keep me in awe of this thing we call the internet.

Re:Puzzles

[tlhIngan]

They're also nice in that they're MIT licensed, and available on all sorts of platforms, including iOS (PuzzleManiak is probably one of the better ports), Android, Symbian and others.

So it's really kinda dangerous for all platforms.

Re:Puzzles

[nadaou]

    apt-get install sgt-puzzles

People who hate Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

I see many people who don't use Windows questioning why you would use PuTTY.

It isn't only "PuTTY for Windows", OpenBSD has it available as a port and also a precompiled package.

Surely the Linux crowd can package it too?

Re:People who hate Windows

[XanC]

I see many people who don't use Windows questioning why you would use PuTTY.

It isn't only "PuTTY for Windows", OpenBSD has it available as a port and also a precompiled package.

Surely the Linux crowd can package it too?

Yes, they can: http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/putty

One big reason it's handy is that with it, you can generate and otherwise deal with PuTTY-formatted key files.

exe different version than installer

[creativeHavoc]

Downloading the exe for putty got me v .60 - i then went back to look closer... the installer got me .61 but I didnt get any options on what all i wanted to install so I got everything.

Re:exe different version than installer

[MetalliQaZ]

Perhaps your ISP is serving you cached files.

I like Cygwin better

[dltaylor]

Why would they bother to port/package it?

I've watched the Windows users at work deal with it, and it looks like it's a royal pain, compared to Cygwin+Cygwin-X that I use on the same platforms. It doesn't seem like it's very well integrated into the Windows clipboard, and, at least the version they're using doesn't work with the keyboard shortcuts neatly, either. Maybe they just don't use it well.

For example, with Cygwin, I can highlight and paste with a middle-click, just as on X-Windows, if I'm using an xterm or other X client application; the highlight also populates the Windows clipboard, so I can paste into an Outlook email, for example, using either the Windows application menu edit-paste or the standard keyboard shortcut (CTRL-v).

On a Linux box, I have at least one telnet client, an ssh client (and server, if I want it), various FTP client choices, and xterms, so what would PuTTY bring to the table? 'Bout the only thing missing on most modern distributions is a default xterm readily available in the menu-customization system.

Re:I like Cygwin better

[meloneg]

Why would they bother to port/package it?

I've watched the Windows users at work deal with it, and it looks like it's a royal pain, compared to Cygwin+Cygwin-X that I use on the same platforms. It doesn't seem like it's very well integrated into the Windows clipboard, and, at least the version they're using doesn't work with the keyboard shortcuts neatly, either. Maybe they just don't use it well.

For example, with Cygwin, I can highlight and paste with a middle-click, just as on X-Windows, if I'm using an xterm or other X client application; the highlight also populates the Windows clipboard, so I can paste into an Outlook email, for example, using either the Windows application menu edit-paste or the standard keyboard shortcut (CTRL-v).

On a Linux box, I have at least one telnet client, an ssh client (and server, if I want it), various FTP client choices, and xterms, so what would PuTTY bring to the table? 'Bout the only thing missing on most modern distributions is a default xterm readily available in the menu-customization system.

Actually, correct, UNIX-style handling of the clipboard is one of the single best features of PuTTY. Ctrl-V has had a very different meaning in the shell (and vi and ...) much longer than it has had any meaning on a "Pee-Cee". I'd be *very* annoyed if I lost the (in-context) correct meaning of Ctrl-V.

Shift-Insert, copy-on-select. These make sense in a shell-context. I don't have a mouse cursor, and don't want one, within a shell. So, copy-on-select makes sense. I'd never select text and hit paste, like in a windowed environment.

Scripting

[killmenow]

I love PuTTY and I use it frequently. That being said, I wish it supported a scripting language. I used to sometimes use Tera Term for its built-in macro scripting language and always wondered why PuTTY never implemented such a feature.

Tabbed Putty?

[Warlord88]

My search for a good version of tabbed putty still continues. Currently I'm using Superputty. Unfortunately, it is far from a finished product - the main problems being lack of proper keyboard shortcuts and non-regain of focus on maximize/minimize.

If someone knows a good tabbed putty version, my life would become a lot simpler.

Re:Tabbed Putty?

[Bloodwine77]

I have not tried it myself, but I've read that a lot of people use PuTTY Connection Manager:

http://puttycm.free.fr/cms/

It is only for Windows and requires .Net framework to be installed, which turns some people off.

Re:Tabbed Putty?

[Warlord88]

I've tried it myself and found it to be horribly buggy/unstable! At least I can work on Superputty without worrying that it'll crash any moment.

Re:Tabbed Putty?

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget the mouse and the tabs and just pick a server to launch screen and go from there. This way I can close my laptop, drive home, vpn back in and get all my sessions exactly how they were. I do something similar with RDP to manage Windows systems. This also means I can survive a network blip and not lose my place (my data center is stable and is remote from my office which has terrible LAN reliability and power issues).

Re:Tabbed Putty?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a fork of this SuperPutty fork that seems to be still supported and updated: http://superputty.vanillaforums.com/ . They have their code available on github.

I haven't messed with it much, but it seems to be working alright.

Re:Tabbed Putty?

[Anonymous Coward]

PuTTYTabManager ,small PuTTY manager which lets you run and manage as many PuTTY sessions as you want from tabbed interface.

http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/manage-multiple-putty-connections-with-putty-tab-manager/

works with putty 0.60 but not with putty 0.61

han unification - epic win!

[decora]

i knew all those unicode folks were right back in the 90s.

who cares if you smash japanese, chinese, and korean into one gigantic encoding? im sure they will all still adopt it!

10 years later, sure, some people still use GB Big5

just a few stragglers obviously!

Why it's called "putty"...

[pinballer]

....because Windows is useless without it. Someone once told me that but I never did try to work out where that came from.

Re:Why it's called "putty"...

[CyberDragon777]

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/faq.html#faq-meaning

A.10.3 What does ‘PuTTY’ mean?

It's the name of a popular SSH and Telnet client. Any other meaning is in the eye of the beholder. It's been rumoured that ‘PuTTY’ is the antonym of ‘getty’, or that it's the stuff that makes your Windows useful, or that it's a kind of plutonium Teletype. We couldn't possibly comment on such allegations.

Monty Python's Flying PuTTY

[axondump]

Oh, I guess I'll have to update the last version of Johann GambolPuTTY then!

psftp is scriptable

[mrmtampa]

Back in 2009 I was tasked with converting a VB app that used the wininet lib ftp routines, to sftp. I had two days before the source site transitioned to sftp entirely and the wininet lib didn't support sftp. There were a number of third-party and open source solutions but I could only use something from the current approved vendor list. We used putty for support so I installed psftp.exe on the utility server and rewrote the VB app to build a psftp script, execute it, and delete it. It was a kludge but it worked and the user never noticed the change; except he did comment that the app was faster!

I wished it had quick download/uploads like CRT.

[antdude]

In SecureCRT (even non-secured one), I use its sz and rz for Zmodem file transfers. I don't need to load up SFTP, SCP, etc. especially when in a hurry.

FYI, it is already in the wishlist, but it is years old and low priority. Le PuTTY exists, but it is an ugly hack and old (last updated in 2006). :(

Re:I wished it had quick download/uploads like CRT

[Bloodwine77]

I love SecureCRT, but I just can't bring myself to spend $99 on a SSH client. I am currently using an older version because my "1 year of updates" is long over, but I greatly prefer its interface to PuTTY. Don't get me wrong, PuTTY is a very nice program that I use on computers where my old SecureCRT isn't installed, but honestly they aren't in the same league (of course, PuTTY is free, extremely portable due to not needing to be installed, and is a solid program).

Re:I wished it had quick download/uploads like CRT

[antdude]

Ditto. I still use v3.4.8. What version do you still use?

Check out that Le PuTTY. It's Z-Modem transfer feature isn't too bad. Just ugly. Uploading doesn't update correctly in real-time.

So does it still have horrible transfer rates?

[Anonymous Coward]

PuTTY definitely has the worst transfer rates of all the windows ssh tools we've ever seen. Is this still the case? Are they still using modem-sized packets and CRCs?

Did they ever fix the piles of channel problems such as "unknown channel type" amongst other errors that slowly fill up everyone's logs?

Our university suggests PuTTY for ease of use, half the departments suggest Bitvise Tunnelier for decent transfers.

ZModem support?

[Gothmolly]

There's LePutty, but it requires you to have the sz/rz binaries available on your system. Anyone know of a free ssh client for Windows that does ZModem ?

Re:ZModem support?

[pne]

Apparently, both Le Putty and Kitty include ZModem capability. (They're both based on the PuTTY source code.)

I haven't used either of them, though, so I can't vouch for how well it works.

PuTTY web design

[tehcyder]

I love opening a web page that is just a black serif-font text on a white background and a few blue hyperlinks.

Seriously. It is so much easier on the eye than Web 2.0 pastel grey on slightly dark grey with blue-grey borders and green-grey highlighting of links (or whatever slashdot is using today)

Re:PuTTY web design

[snowgirl]

I believe Knuth's answer is black (or by his own webpage an orange-ish brown) on pastel yellow.

Re:I wished it had quick download/uploads like CRT

[Bloodwine77]

It is funny that you mention it. I use version 3.4.8 as well.

My license issue date is 5/11/2001, and with that issue date version 3.4.8 is the newest I can grab.

I am not sure what your issue date is, but if it is on or after 6/1/2001 then you can get SecureCRT 4.0.x:
http://www.vandyke.com/pricing/upgrades/securecrt_securecrt_el.html

If I had only waited to get my license for another 30 days...

Re:I wished it had quick download/uploads like CRT

[DavidTC]

I personally find the idea of using the same product for ssh and scp a little baffling.

Seriously, that's what WinSCP or Filezilla is for.

Although, frankly, I don't really understand why people appear to be copying files so much.

Re:because some of us have to work with approved a

[Anonymous Coward]

Bingo! It's one app that everyone I know, who are still in corporate windows environments, keep on hand. It's a good enough terminal emulator to access devices via SSH.

No not really

[Sycraft-fu]

Putty is not very good compared to SecureCRT or the SSH.com client. It lacks advanced features they have, doesn't have nearly as nice a user interface, is not often updated, and so on.

The reason people use it is the price. It is a usable SSH client and it costs nothing. That makes it desirable. However that doesn't mean it would compete if it cost money.

Oo Serial fix!

[uncledrax]

I see the changelog has a note about a fix for the Serial interface.. hurrah!

Re:I wished it had quick download/uploads like CRT

[WuphonsReach]

I'm still using 5.2 SecureCRT (or something from the 5.x era).

Personally, since I spent a few hours each day in terminal windows, SecureCRT is worth the cost.

But not worth upgrading every year. I only upgrade every few years.

Re:I wished it had quick download/uploads like CRT

[WuphonsReach]

Some things are easier to do on a GUI desktop with a mouse, such as diff tools. So unless you run an X server locally, or remote into the server, it's easier to bring the files down locally and work on them.

Teraterm Pro 4.x

[Blaskowicz]

I used Teraterm quite a bit, it is little known but is fully free software, and a revival of an old project. it's good, and mature :)

Smooth scrolling!

[jones_supa]

Smooth scrolling would be a feature I'd love to see in some terminal emulator. AFAIK no current software implements it. As you might know, some old hardware terminals had this feature where new lines would appear "smoothly", scanline-by-scanline on the screen. Maybe Compiz would also help here to make it slick.

Re:Smooth scrolling!

[BattleApple]

When I was in high school, we had a digital VAX with vt101 terminals that scrolled like that.. I thought it looked so cool. I'd love to see that in a terminal emulator

Thanks!

[Medievalist]

Your post was very informative and interesting; thanks for taking the time to write it up.

I'm wondering about this part, though:

* Authentication and authorization and encryption is automatic (no need to exchange SSL keys).

If you are saying you can use powershell to execute commands on any windows box without any setup or configuration of authentication and authorization by that box's owner, that does not sound desirable at all! And it would be a big surprise, too, since I spend hundreds of hours every year maintaining MS-Windows domain authentication and authorization infrastructures. ;)

Again, thanks for the info! I'll try to put it to good use.

cygwin and windows terminal emulator

[Baki]

Cygwin comes with a port of rxvt, which is much better than windows cmd. Works well with ssh and screen.

Jump lists

[Vrtigo1]

For anyone else wondering how to get the jump list to work, make sure you have saved sessions setup, and double click to connect. After you do this, that saved session should show up in the jump list. Rock!