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"For years, Apple MacBooks have been the go-to choice for many admins partly because getting to a ssh shell is so easy." I really can't believe somebody ever b
by kabes 9y ago
"For years, Apple MacBooks have been the go-to choice for many admins partly because getting to a ssh shell is so easy."
I really can't believe somebody ever bought a MacBook because they found installing putty too much of hassle.
- mgiannopoulos 9y agoAdmins can not install stuff , it's quite known /s
- thinkMOAR 9y agoAdmins cannot install stuff? Then who can? :)
- mgiannopoulos 9y agoI guess the /s was not clear to indicate my attempt at humour :)
- thinkMOAR 9y agoah no, /s was unknown to me; also hard to google, what does it stand for example? /serious?
- mgiannopoulos 9y agoIt's short for /sarcasm
- realusername 9y agoIt's not only about this, you needed to install more and more things every year in windows for it to work. You needed to install Cygwin, a proper terminal (cmd.exe isn't exactly usable), python libraries, Putty, now Docker... Not to mention that since developers are only using Linux and Mac, you will have libraries which does not work on windows (because nobody even tried).
- romanovcode 9y ago> You needed to install Cygwin Just install Ubuntu Shell. Also, it's not like you don't need to install iTerm, zsh, docker, python libraries etc on mac. It's not like it comes with them by default. Your argument is kind of moot.
- djd20 9y agoA good terminal and python are both standard with OSX. Though I agree having homebrew does make life easier. Don't think Windows has an equivalent...
- vog 9y agoThat's an interesting point. Mabye Homebrew, and its predecessors, were the real killer apps for mac?
- vetinari 9y agoYou do not need to install iTerm and zsh; Terminal.app and bash will do the job just fine, alternate terminal and shell are just preferences. cmd.exe and conhost.exe won't do the job.
- indeed30 9y agoAlso zsh is pre-installed with the latest few versions of OS X anyway.
- stinky613 9y agoIn addition to all the typical Bash tools, you also have C/C++/Objective-C, Apache, PHP, Ruby, Perl, Python, SQLite, and Apache. Maybe I just don't remember installing it, but I think macs have zsh out-of-the-box too.
- colechristensen 9y agoYou'd better believe that if Windows had an acceptable terminal 10 years ago I would have never purchased my first MacBook. The pleasant interaction with other *nix systems was and is a primary driver for my choice of OS X. PuTTy sucks. Every other terminal I have tried on Windows sucks. Getting terminal-based software to work on Windows sucks. I stopped trying years ago because a terminal on OS X doesn't suck. It might not be a perfect 10, but I'm happy with it. I'm also more interested in Windows more and more as time passes. Losing as the most popular OS has made Microsoft start doing some of the right things.
- MaxBarraclough 9y ago> PuTTy sucks Never been a problem for me. What are your complaints? I barely notice the difference, but if I had to choose I'd take putty over Terminal.app, which has default keyboard-shortcuts that clash with Bash. (I believe it was Alt-b, Alt-d, or maybe Alt-f. I forget exactly.)
- sgt 9y agoIt's one of those things that's hard to explain. If you're used to a proper terminal emulator, you'll know immediately. PuTTy has terrible configuration and awkward default settings, and gives the impression of being pretty flimsy. Remove the network cable while in an SSH session, and PuTTy will immediately disconnect you. Try doing a port forward, and you'll need to dig around instead of just typing it into a terminal. Also aesthetically, PuTTy has nothing on Terminal.app or iTerm2 etc.
- dozzie 9y ago> Remove the network cable while in an SSH session, and PuTTy will immediately disconnect you. But it's not a problem with PuTTY, it's a problem with Windows networking subsystem. Once you remove cable, the whole interface immediately goes down, IP address gets deconfigured, and all open sockets using the address get closed. (I was bitten in the ass by this when I had several Windows Server machines under my care.) You'll get exactly the same with any other long running TCP connection.
- pmontra 9y agoMaybe not, but having used both Putty and ssh (Linux) for many years, I'm so happy I don't have to run Putty again. I stopped using it at the end of 2008 when I reformatted my work laptop to Ubuntu. Not only Putty is a worse terminal than gnome-terminal but the key management was insane.
- sametmax 9y agoI can. Putty sucks. For a decent key management you need cmder + keypass, and i doubt people want to waste the time i did to experiment until they arrive to such conclusion.
- _Codemonkeyism 9y agoI have a Win10 XPS13 after 15 years of OSX. And Putty is bad. Not the ssh, but the tool support. And it's not only SSH but the missing shell. I currently use Ubuntu on Win10 just to use a proper shell with ssh. And of course my next computer will be a MacBook again.
- dozzie 9y agoIt's not installing PuTTY, it's using it. Normally you have a fully-fledged programming language that sometimes runs a command being SSH client, and universal one at that (you can pipe data through it, you can pipe data out of it, you can run remote commands non-interactively with it, you can jump through SSH on other hosts with it, you can set up TCP tunnels in ad-hoc manner without going through the configuration, and obviously you can run an interactive shell). Plus you get scp for file transfer out of the box, and lftp (which understands sftp protocol) and rsync after installing some barely related software, all of them still able to jump through other hosts. Now compare it to the glorious ability to open a window with remote shell (and only direct one, no jumping through a bastion host), and maybe a TCP tunnel with some clicking through every single time (you can't recall the history of commands, because there was no command in the first place; the best you can do is to save the tunnel configuration permanently). And maybe file transfer if you remembered to download PuTTY's scp client.
- xenophonf 9y agoYou can do all that stuff using Cygwin at least as far back as 2005, because I was running Unix dump and rsync through ssh from a Windows backup server back then. Cygwin eventually adapted PuTTY as its terminal emulator too, in the form of MinTTY. You can do SSH proxying with PuTTY, too. It's just called something different: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28926612/putty-configuration-equivalent-to-openssh-proxycommand https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28926612/putty-configura... Plus PuTTY has a command line interface and everything. You can do all the things you mention with PuTTY from a cmd.exe or PowerShell prompt.
- emmelaich 9y agoYeah, Mintty is great. Install Cygwin just for Mintty if you like. Still better than Putty.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- oliwarner 9y agoIf you think PuTTY is even half the environment bash+ssh is, you probably won't understand what the people buying Macbooks, or using Linux directly on Whatever{books,tops,pads}™ are getting from their choice. Not trying to be condescending, but it seems to need highlighting that just having SSH access isn't enough. Not to mention that these other environments have offered other benefits [especially] to developers looking for a programming environment that works for them. The VS.Net IDE-play-button approach to automating testing and deployment doesn't scale for everybody.
- nailer 9y agoMicrosoft are writing a proper, tabbed multiprocess terminal for a future Windows 10 release.
- voltagex_ 9y agoSource? Is it in the Fast Ring yet?
- nailer 9y agoGuy in charge of it, Mike Griese, Software Engineer at Microsoft, writing on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14099051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14099051
- komodo 9y agoConsole should benefit from the system wide 'Windows Sets' tabbing feature https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/tabs-come-to-every-window-in-windows-10-sets/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/tabs-come-to-every-w...
- efdee 9y agoOr maybe some people just need PuTTY for the SSH stuff, because they feel Powershell is superior to bash and related Unix shells.
- 9y ago
- geocar 9y ago> I really can't believe somebody ever bought a MacBook because they found installing putty too much of hassle. No, but something like installing putty was the last straw. Putty is a terrible experience; very difficult to use. It's like every misstep or disconnection involves a dozen or so clicks back into the configuration area to "try again". This feels like normal on Windows though. I recently tried to port my workflow to Windows for a year, but I eventually gave up simply because of something like this. I might've made it 6-7 months and I can't recall exactly where it was, death from a thousand cuts maybe.
- PuffinBlue 9y ago> I might've made it 6-7 months Hat's off to you, I didn't even make it that many weeks. Between filenames/paths being too long, poor terminals with janky colour schemes (save for Mobaxterm, it's great), WSL issues (like umask handling), gvim/vim issues with plugins, and loads of other annoying bits I just went back to Linux. Linux is FAR from perfect, especially as I have an Nvidia graphics card, but there's a lot to like there too. Having run Fedora 27/Ubuntu 17.10 I've found I really really like Gnome. I seem to be in a club of one there (and it's buggy as hell on 17.10) but for me it's been great to use. Not that I wouldn't use Mac if I found a couple grand down the back of the sofa, but as a daily driver Linux has been less painful. Even on the laptop, though I do have one of those Dell certified ones.
- ra1n85 9y agoHappens all the time. The basic Unix tools are valuable assets - it's more than just ssh.
- fsloth 9y agoGiven how critical good terminal experience is to modern IT the fact that putty is the go to tool for this in windows is a bad joke. Not to put down putty. From the point of resourcing, I mean. Here we have Microsoft on a gazillion dollars of capital and one of the most critical tools for several people is developed by a single talented hobbyist who gives it for free.
- geodel 9y agoNot to disagree with you on anything but same gazillion dollar company is now doubling down of a Javascript code editor because writing high quality native code is so difficult and expensive.
- baldfat 9y agoputty isn't a great client it just that it worked. I personally haven't used putty from a windows machine for over 5 years. I use cmder and just use it like I was on Linux. http://cmder.net/ http://cmder.net/
- swiley 9y agoI wouldn't buy them because of that but I always use the iMacs in the university computer lab just because SSH is already installed.
- DCKing 9y agoOf course it's easy to straw-man this particular sentence. However many people - including me, once - bought a MacBook because it was the easiest way to get proper Unix tools like SSH at your fingertips. Using PuTTY or Mingw tools on Windows sucks compared to using them on a Unix-based system. I gotta say the Windows Subsystem for Linux really helps in that regard - as does native SSH in cmd an PowerShell (PowerShell by itself is also pretty awesome once you get the hang of it). Linux did not use to be such a great competitor for the rest of desktop usage (some will argue it still isn't).
- notheguyouthink 9y agoI bought a MacBook because the terminal on Windows, including PuTTY, is just.. bad. It's my main environment, I want it to be top notch. I'm shocked I've yet to see something that feels like iTerm2 on Windows.
- paulie_a 9y agoI don't mean any offense because it is a useful tool in a pinch. But I would never use putty on a regular basis for real work
- davidandgoliath 9y agoI swapped to mac for this very reason, actually. Now that windows has WSL, I've been straddling the fence on whether to swap back (tried it back in Dec., might give it another try soon).
- herbst 9y agoIt's not putty. It is every single terminal application out there.
- satysin 9y agoWell not just ssh but I did leave Windows for Fedora because Windows lacked a solid terminal emulator and all third party ones did was act as a wrapper around cmd.exe which solved some UX issues but not the core limitations of cmd.exe itself.
- Moeancurly 9y ago> I really can't believe somebody ever bought a MacBook because they found installing putty too much of hassle. I'm one of these somebodies. It's not that installing Putty is a hassle, but my choice to buy a MacBook was very heavily driven by the fact that macOS is Unix based. My time spent between Windows 10 and macOS is pretty even, but it is a much more enjoyable experience to develop in macOS partly because of the Unix-based shell.