8 ms·

It's about time. I can't imagine (as the author asserts) that people left Windows for Apple because of the lack of a command ssh client. Here's a thought: If

It's about time. I can't imagine (as the author asserts) that people left Windows for Apple because of the lack of a command ssh client. Here's a thought: If you need to spend time on Unix/Linux machines, why not just run that on the desktop? I've been Linux only for 10 years and have no issues. OK, I do need Windows for the rare moments where I have to collaborate on Word or PowerPoint documents; Win in a VM (KVM/QEMU) gets the job done. Does this new client support ssh-copy-id and passwordless logins? I have a couple of public-facing machines that need ssh; I refuse to enable password authentication as they'll get banged on all day!

deadbunny 9y ago
Because Windows is foisted upon people in corporate environments. Not everyone gets to run their OS of choice.
- putinontheritz 9y ago
  Foisted is a very apt term
- F00Fbug 9y ago
  Good point - as Mel Brooks said, "It's good to be the king!" In my last job, I was IT; I dread going to some place where they force Windows upon me!
  - digitalsushi 9y ago
    I work at a very corporate place with forced windows laptops. There are zero systems in the company we can sit down at and log into, except our laptops. The OS version is updated, and upgraded, automatically, even including major versions. I was just force upgraded to windows 10 and lost support for my programming environment. I had to recreate it in a new toolset because the one I have a thousand hours in is no longer supported. (It would work, it's just not supported - I cannot install it, but it would work fine if I could). One arm of my company allows macs. This one does not, period. We have a 0% non windows 10 user base. We can have temporary admin access for 12 hours if we will out a report, but everything we do is recorded. It doesnt work if we're on wifi or battery. We are not allowed to install browser extensions, even if we are developing against the web. My last job let everyone have admin/root. I had everything I ever wanted. My workflow was glorious. I was so comfortable. I was able to work 3 to 4 times faster on average, i.e. my yearly output was probably 3 to 4 times more productive. I invented new things, scratched my itches, and felt like the king of the world. But this job will let me retire.
    - jackstraw14 9y ago
      I work in the public sector and our sysadmins have actually made a game out of tricking people into updating to Windows 10 (and allowing them to take back admin rights in the process). Like offering Office 2016 upgrades, but only if you upgrade to Windows 10 too. I understand it’s much easier for them to manage things this way, but they’re not going to have the results they want by going about it this way. When my Windows 10 “upgrade” comes, I’ll just be dedicating one of my monitors to my own Arch (maybe Qubes) box where I can actually get shit done. I’m a C# dev too, which makes even less sense, but requesting permission to install simple dev tools is not going to happen. Life is too short for this nonsense.
      - F00Fbug 9y ago
        Sounds pretty common! About Qubes: I was just playing with it a couple of weeks ago. It's interesting, and I'd consider using it except for one thing. When you're running a browser, the cursor doesn't change when hovering over a link. I know it sounds nitpicky, but I kind of want/need that. I did some digging around and didn't get any solution. Are you OK with that, or did you find a workaround?
        jackstraw14 9y ago
        I used Qubes for a few years and don’t remember running into that, but I’ve used Vim keybinding extensions in the browser for a while and may not have noticed. It’s that way in all browsers for you?
        F00Fbug 9y ago
        I'm pretty sure it happened in both Firefox and Chrome. It seems to be a common complaint, but I couldn't find a fix (and didn't really look too hard).
      - cptskippy 9y ago
        What's your opposition to Windows 10 if you're already running Windows? We're running Windows 7 and I'm begging to get into the pilot for Windows 10. As time passes more and more things break in Windows 7 and it becomes less useful. Most of Intels drivers are garbage and their Bluetooth stack is next to useless. I'm running VMs ontop of my Windows 7 install for all development work. Anything that's Windows based is either a 10 or 2016.
- outsideoflife 9y ago
  It was foisted on me, but I created a group in our approved software policy with just me in it, added Virtualbox to the group and managed to get the change request signed off! I use Ubuntu now for everything but MS Office and the dreaded ERP client.
  - liopleurodon 9y ago
    good lord. I would've gone the hyper-v route, that comes with Windows 10 pro, doesn't it? (another linux only user here, so idk). Should perform better than Virtualbox too
    - 0xcde4c3db 9y ago
      I found out the hard way that Hyper-V prevents other virtualization software from running, notably including the x86 Android emulator.
      - sangnoir 9y ago
        My guess is virtualization software is mutually exclusive. On Linux, I can't run VirtualBox and KVM at the same time: if I want to run one, I have to unload the kernel modules belonging to the other.
        tinus_hn 9y ago
        Actually, it’s virtualization hardware that is exclusive. Microsoft pulled an old trick out of their sleeve and implemented a feature, Device Guard, that requires virtualization. And of course it blocks other uses of the virtualization hardware, except, surprise surprise, their own virtualization solution. D-, does not play well with others. If your company requires Device Guard you can only use software based virtualization or Hyper-V.
      - nlawalker 9y ago
        There's another gotcha here too: if your deployment uses Windows 10 Credential Guard and/or Device Guard, the Hyper-V hypervisor is installed even though Windows reports the Hyper-V role as not installed, and you will not be able to run other virtualization solutions. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3204980/virtualization-applications-do-not-work-together-with-hyper-v--device https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3204980/virtualizat... https://exoticbaryon.anset.org/2017/09/18/when-virtualbox-wont-let-you-start-64bit-vms-windows-defender-device-guard/ https://exoticbaryon.anset.org/2017/09/18/when-virtualbox-wo...
- thecrumb 9y ago
  I'm working now to move my Win 8 install to a VM then I can format this damn machine an install a real OS. All I need Windows for really is Skype and MS Teams.
- hungerstrike 9y ago
  Obviously somebody in those corporations chose it. Running a large fleet of non-Windows computers means writing your own software to manage them, just like Google had to do [0]. Not every business wants to do that. [0] https://9to5mac.com/2013/11/27/how-google-manages-over-40000-macs-without-much-help-from-apple/ https://9to5mac.com/2013/11/27/how-google-manages-over-40000...
  - deadbunny 9y ago
    Assuming a Linux fleet you can use config management tools just as easily for desktops as servers.
- zjaffee 9y ago
  Part of this though is because software was historically built for windows in a way that it isn't anymore. Even at tech companies, where the majority of employees are using macbooks, you'll often see people in the finance department using windows machines. I imagine as the growth of SaaS continues we will see less of this, especially because it's much easier for the IT department to manage one type of computer where macs tend to have a higher build quality than most windows based machines.
coldacid 9y ago
I don't know about ssh-copy-id but it definitely supports passwordless logins. You just need to set up ~/.ssh directories as you would on other systems, and ensure the correct file permissions are set. There's a Powershell script to help with that.
bmaupin 9y ago
I find the free version of Office 365 is often sufficient for collaborating on Office documents without needing Windows, although they've intentionally left many features out so it isn't a complete replacement.
pschlump 9y ago
I quit using Windows as my primary desktop because of lack of SSH support.
- icedchai 9y ago
  Was there a problem installing Putty?
  - asendra 9y ago
    Yes. Putty.
    - icedchai 9y ago
      Strange. I never had a problem with it 10 years ago. Perhaps our expectations for a terminal have changed in that time.
      - samfisher83 9y ago
        Putty works fine. You can even do x11 forwarding or socks proxing. If you have an x11 server running on your machine you can have a linux display.
  - PascLeRasc 9y ago
    Putty's been being distributed over unsecured HTTP for years - I wouldn't be surprised if some companies' IT departments forbid it.
    - ac29 9y ago
      The main page [0] and main download [1] are HTTPS. GPG signatures are provided as well. [0] https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/latest.html https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/latest.ht... [1] https://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/latest/w64/putty-64bit-0.70-installer.msi https://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/latest/w64/putty-64bit-...
qaq 9y ago
Because on OS X you can run Office and Outlook and many other commercial apps without VM?
- bknight1983 9y ago
  If only Office on macOS actually worked as well as its Windows counterpart
  - e40 9y ago
    I've been using it since the latest version was made available, and early on it crashed from time to time, but I haven't noticed problems for more than a year.
    - vetinari 9y ago
      It ranges from bugs to missing features. When you import UTF-8 encoded CSV file, you cannot scroll the preview, since todays update. In previous versions, it would crash Excel. You cannot connect to PostgreSQL, unless you use a "blessed" ODBC driver. The one from EnterpriseDB, which works will all other Mac ODBC apps, will make Excel crash. So will your own build from odbc.postgresql.org, no matter which version you try. There are exactly none of the Power* or Inquire features from the Windows Excel.
- crottypeter 9y ago
  Os X is Unix on the desktop
- Nullabillity 9y ago
  That sounds like a minus to me.
  - qaq 9y ago
    Well in most large corp. environments outlook is a thing so if you have no choice but to use it I'd rather use it from OS X.
erikb 9y ago
Usually people who work for Corp or Government can't choose the OS their organisation supports. You can be actually happy if your windows is as modern and free that you can install something like git-bash on there (and then of course you work on a Linux VM that is hosted somewhere in the office, or AWS or similar)
JoBrad 9y ago
I’m going to try this out, but if you’re using Windows 10, you can install WSL, which has all of the normal SSH commands, and definitely supports using keys for SSH.
jasonlotito 9y ago
> If you need to spend time on Unix/Linux machines, why not just run that on the desktop? I've been Linux only for 10 years and have no issues. Because at least for Linux, its desktop support is still severely lacking. Maybe it's the distribution I was using (Ubuntu), but all i wanted to do was hook my laptop up to my monitors and use the external monitors alongside my laptop monitor, like I do on Mac or Windows laptops. I failed. I remember hand coding an XFree86Config file almost two decades ago to get three monitors setup. So yeah, that's why I don't work with Linux on the desktop. Because it doesn't work for me on the desktop.
- zeveb 9y ago
  Just as another anecdote, I use my Linux laptop with an external monitor every single day. Even have StumpWM configured with keystrokes to switch between portrait and landscape modes (using arandr).
- davidandgoliath 9y ago
  > "I remember hand coding an XFree86Config file almost two > decades ago to get three monitors setup." Yeah, it's come a long way since then ;) It's 100% plug and play, at least with fedora/ubuntu/debian. Haven't played much outside that realm.
  - WalterGR 9y ago
    It's 100% plug and play Is it still necessary to research whether a piece of hardware is supported on Linux, and how well it's supported, before buying the hardware?
    - TheDauthi 9y ago
      The only hardware I've seen having problems recently were Macbooks. I'd research the model before I would try to put Linux on one. The ones having two graphics processors are really finicky, as I can attest to about my work laptop. That said, I'd probably check out a laptop in general if I were going to buy one to see if anyone has major problems. I was bitten about 5 years ago with one where the touchpad was too sensitive, no matter what I did.
frou_dh 9y ago
> I can't imagine (as the author asserts) that people left Windows for Apple because of the lack of a command ssh client. Here's a thought: If you need to spend time on Unix/Linux machines, why not just run that on the desktop? I've been Linux only for 10 years and have no issues. What's your point? Apple Macs are Unix, and in fact certifiably UNIX®: https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/ https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/
- adamtulinius 9y ago
  I find it really convenient to run the same OS on my laptop, as on the servers I administrate. Others probably feel the same, and I suspect that was the GP's point as well. :) Also, almost nobody care about Unix certification. Linux isn't certified, and except for really niche things, Linux is all that matters (if you aren't running Windows).
- toxican 9y ago
  I think their point is that there's no point in trying to force Windows to behave like a Unix when you can just use a Mac or install/dualboot Linux. There are a lot of reasons (fascism-based IT department, can't afford a Mac, etc.), but it's a good point. Once I stopped trying to trick Windows into working like Linux and just freaking installed Linux, my workflow became SUPER smooth.
jxdxbx 9y ago
I know lots of developers who use a Mac specifically because it is a Unix system with normal Unix tools that can also run lots of commercial desktop software.

deadbunny 9y ago

Because Windows is foisted upon people in corporate environments. Not everyone gets to run their OS of choice.

putinontheritz 9y ago
Foisted is a very apt term
F00Fbug 9y ago
Good point - as Mel Brooks said, "It's good to be the king!" In my last job, I was IT; I dread going to some place where they force Windows upon me!
- digitalsushi 9y ago
  I work at a very corporate place with forced windows laptops. There are zero systems in the company we can sit down at and log into, except our laptops. The OS version is updated, and upgraded, automatically, even including major versions. I was just force upgraded to windows 10 and lost support for my programming environment. I had to recreate it in a new toolset because the one I have a thousand hours in is no longer supported. (It would work, it's just not supported - I cannot install it, but it would work fine if I could). One arm of my company allows macs. This one does not, period. We have a 0% non windows 10 user base. We can have temporary admin access for 12 hours if we will out a report, but everything we do is recorded. It doesnt work if we're on wifi or battery. We are not allowed to install browser extensions, even if we are developing against the web. My last job let everyone have admin/root. I had everything I ever wanted. My workflow was glorious. I was so comfortable. I was able to work 3 to 4 times faster on average, i.e. my yearly output was probably 3 to 4 times more productive. I invented new things, scratched my itches, and felt like the king of the world. But this job will let me retire.
  - jackstraw14 9y ago
    I work in the public sector and our sysadmins have actually made a game out of tricking people into updating to Windows 10 (and allowing them to take back admin rights in the process). Like offering Office 2016 upgrades, but only if you upgrade to Windows 10 too. I understand it’s much easier for them to manage things this way, but they’re not going to have the results they want by going about it this way. When my Windows 10 “upgrade” comes, I’ll just be dedicating one of my monitors to my own Arch (maybe Qubes) box where I can actually get shit done. I’m a C# dev too, which makes even less sense, but requesting permission to install simple dev tools is not going to happen. Life is too short for this nonsense.
    - F00Fbug 9y ago
      Sounds pretty common! About Qubes: I was just playing with it a couple of weeks ago. It's interesting, and I'd consider using it except for one thing. When you're running a browser, the cursor doesn't change when hovering over a link. I know it sounds nitpicky, but I kind of want/need that. I did some digging around and didn't get any solution. Are you OK with that, or did you find a workaround?
      - jackstraw14 9y ago
        I used Qubes for a few years and don’t remember running into that, but I’ve used Vim keybinding extensions in the browser for a while and may not have noticed. It’s that way in all browsers for you?
        F00Fbug 9y ago
        I'm pretty sure it happened in both Firefox and Chrome. It seems to be a common complaint, but I couldn't find a fix (and didn't really look too hard).
    - cptskippy 9y ago
      What's your opposition to Windows 10 if you're already running Windows? We're running Windows 7 and I'm begging to get into the pilot for Windows 10. As time passes more and more things break in Windows 7 and it becomes less useful. Most of Intels drivers are garbage and their Bluetooth stack is next to useless. I'm running VMs ontop of my Windows 7 install for all development work. Anything that's Windows based is either a 10 or 2016.
outsideoflife 9y ago
It was foisted on me, but I created a group in our approved software policy with just me in it, added Virtualbox to the group and managed to get the change request signed off! I use Ubuntu now for everything but MS Office and the dreaded ERP client.
- liopleurodon 9y ago
  good lord. I would've gone the hyper-v route, that comes with Windows 10 pro, doesn't it? (another linux only user here, so idk). Should perform better than Virtualbox too
  - 0xcde4c3db 9y ago
    I found out the hard way that Hyper-V prevents other virtualization software from running, notably including the x86 Android emulator.
    - sangnoir 9y ago
      My guess is virtualization software is mutually exclusive. On Linux, I can't run VirtualBox and KVM at the same time: if I want to run one, I have to unload the kernel modules belonging to the other.
      - tinus_hn 9y ago
        Actually, it’s virtualization hardware that is exclusive. Microsoft pulled an old trick out of their sleeve and implemented a feature, Device Guard, that requires virtualization. And of course it blocks other uses of the virtualization hardware, except, surprise surprise, their own virtualization solution. D-, does not play well with others. If your company requires Device Guard you can only use software based virtualization or Hyper-V.
    - nlawalker 9y ago
      There's another gotcha here too: if your deployment uses Windows 10 Credential Guard and/or Device Guard, the Hyper-V hypervisor is installed even though Windows reports the Hyper-V role as not installed, and you will not be able to run other virtualization solutions. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3204980/virtualization-applications-do-not-work-together-with-hyper-v--device https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3204980/virtualizat... https://exoticbaryon.anset.org/2017/09/18/when-virtualbox-wont-let-you-start-64bit-vms-windows-defender-device-guard/ https://exoticbaryon.anset.org/2017/09/18/when-virtualbox-wo...
thecrumb 9y ago
I'm working now to move my Win 8 install to a VM then I can format this damn machine an install a real OS. All I need Windows for really is Skype and MS Teams.
hungerstrike 9y ago
Obviously somebody in those corporations chose it. Running a large fleet of non-Windows computers means writing your own software to manage them, just like Google had to do [0]. Not every business wants to do that. [0] https://9to5mac.com/2013/11/27/how-google-manages-over-40000-macs-without-much-help-from-apple/ https://9to5mac.com/2013/11/27/how-google-manages-over-40000...
- deadbunny 9y ago
  Assuming a Linux fleet you can use config management tools just as easily for desktops as servers.
zjaffee 9y ago
Part of this though is because software was historically built for windows in a way that it isn't anymore. Even at tech companies, where the majority of employees are using macbooks, you'll often see people in the finance department using windows machines. I imagine as the growth of SaaS continues we will see less of this, especially because it's much easier for the IT department to manage one type of computer where macs tend to have a higher build quality than most windows based machines.

coldacid 9y ago

I don't know about ssh-copy-id but it definitely supports passwordless logins. You just need to set up ~/.ssh directories as you would on other systems, and ensure the correct file permissions are set. There's a Powershell script to help with that.

bmaupin 9y ago

I find the free version of Office 365 is often sufficient for collaborating on Office documents without needing Windows, although they've intentionally left many features out so it isn't a complete replacement.

pschlump 9y ago

I quit using Windows as my primary desktop because of lack of SSH support.

icedchai 9y ago
Was there a problem installing Putty?
- asendra 9y ago
  Yes. Putty.
  - icedchai 9y ago
    Strange. I never had a problem with it 10 years ago. Perhaps our expectations for a terminal have changed in that time.
    - samfisher83 9y ago
      Putty works fine. You can even do x11 forwarding or socks proxing. If you have an x11 server running on your machine you can have a linux display.
- PascLeRasc 9y ago
  Putty's been being distributed over unsecured HTTP for years - I wouldn't be surprised if some companies' IT departments forbid it.
  - ac29 9y ago
    The main page [0] and main download [1] are HTTPS. GPG signatures are provided as well. [0] https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/latest.html https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/latest.ht... [1] https://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/latest/w64/putty-64bit-0.70-installer.msi https://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/latest/w64/putty-64bit-...

qaq 9y ago

Because on OS X you can run Office and Outlook and many other commercial apps without VM?

bknight1983 9y ago
If only Office on macOS actually worked as well as its Windows counterpart
- e40 9y ago
  I've been using it since the latest version was made available, and early on it crashed from time to time, but I haven't noticed problems for more than a year.
  - vetinari 9y ago
    It ranges from bugs to missing features. When you import UTF-8 encoded CSV file, you cannot scroll the preview, since todays update. In previous versions, it would crash Excel. You cannot connect to PostgreSQL, unless you use a "blessed" ODBC driver. The one from EnterpriseDB, which works will all other Mac ODBC apps, will make Excel crash. So will your own build from odbc.postgresql.org, no matter which version you try. There are exactly none of the Power* or Inquire features from the Windows Excel.
crottypeter 9y ago
Os X is Unix on the desktop
Nullabillity 9y ago
That sounds like a minus to me.
- qaq 9y ago
  Well in most large corp. environments outlook is a thing so if you have no choice but to use it I'd rather use it from OS X.

erikb 9y ago

Usually people who work for Corp or Government can't choose the OS their organisation supports. You can be actually happy if your windows is as modern and free that you can install something like git-bash on there (and then of course you work on a Linux VM that is hosted somewhere in the office, or AWS or similar)

JoBrad 9y ago

I’m going to try this out, but if you’re using Windows 10, you can install WSL, which has all of the normal SSH commands, and definitely supports using keys for SSH.

jasonlotito 9y ago

> If you need to spend time on Unix/Linux machines, why not just run that on the desktop? I've been Linux only for 10 years and have no issues. Because at least for Linux, its desktop support is still severely lacking. Maybe it's the distribution I was using (Ubuntu), but all i wanted to do was hook my laptop up to my monitors and use the external monitors alongside my laptop monitor, like I do on Mac or Windows laptops. I failed. I remember hand coding an XFree86Config file almost two decades ago to get three monitors setup. So yeah, that's why I don't work with Linux on the desktop. Because it doesn't work for me on the desktop.

zeveb 9y ago
Just as another anecdote, I use my Linux laptop with an external monitor every single day. Even have StumpWM configured with keystrokes to switch between portrait and landscape modes (using arandr).
davidandgoliath 9y ago
> "I remember hand coding an XFree86Config file almost two > decades ago to get three monitors setup." Yeah, it's come a long way since then ;) It's 100% plug and play, at least with fedora/ubuntu/debian. Haven't played much outside that realm.
- WalterGR 9y ago
  It's 100% plug and play Is it still necessary to research whether a piece of hardware is supported on Linux, and how well it's supported, before buying the hardware?
  - TheDauthi 9y ago
    The only hardware I've seen having problems recently were Macbooks. I'd research the model before I would try to put Linux on one. The ones having two graphics processors are really finicky, as I can attest to about my work laptop. That said, I'd probably check out a laptop in general if I were going to buy one to see if anyone has major problems. I was bitten about 5 years ago with one where the touchpad was too sensitive, no matter what I did.

frou_dh 9y ago

> I can't imagine (as the author asserts) that people left Windows for Apple because of the lack of a command ssh client. Here's a thought: If you need to spend time on Unix/Linux machines, why not just run that on the desktop? I've been Linux only for 10 years and have no issues. What's your point? Apple Macs are Unix, and in fact certifiably UNIX®: https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/ https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/

adamtulinius 9y ago
I find it really convenient to run the same OS on my laptop, as on the servers I administrate. Others probably feel the same, and I suspect that was the GP's point as well. :) Also, almost nobody care about Unix certification. Linux isn't certified, and except for really niche things, Linux is all that matters (if you aren't running Windows).
toxican 9y ago
I think their point is that there's no point in trying to force Windows to behave like a Unix when you can just use a Mac or install/dualboot Linux. There are a lot of reasons (fascism-based IT department, can't afford a Mac, etc.), but it's a good point. Once I stopped trying to trick Windows into working like Linux and just freaking installed Linux, my workflow became SUPER smooth.

jxdxbx 9y ago

I know lots of developers who use a Mac specifically because it is a Unix system with normal Unix tools that can also run lots of commercial desktop software.