7 ms·

Windows 1803 Update Turns on SSH

79 points by gilnims 8y ago

eigenvector 8y ago
Let's take this moment to acknowledge PuTTY, which has been serving our SSH client needs in the former barren-*nix-utility wasteland of Windows since 1999. Thanks, Simon Tatham & the maintainers of PuTTY.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  RIP my need for PuTTY going forward though, really. I guess I probably still need PuTTY for console cable maybe? But yes, hat tip to one incredibly handy piece of software.
  - jkaplowitz 8y ago
    It's still the only SSH client I know that can change most of its settings during an existing session, especially in a cross-platform way (it is available for Linux). Good software indeed.
    - benjohnson 8y ago
      Forgive me for a dumb question, but I'm trying to be helpful. Are you talking about tunnels and port forwards? OpenSSH can do that - you type in an escape sequence and you can work your magic on the fly.
      - soccerdave 8y ago
        Just wanted to thank you for this answer. I never knew about OpenSSH escape sequences and I've used ssh for years. https://pleiades.ucsc.edu/hyades/SSH_Escape_Sequences https://pleiades.ucsc.edu/hyades/SSH_Escape_Sequences
      - jkaplowitz 8y ago
        No, I'm talking about a lot more settings than that including things about terminal emulation and keyboards. Next time you use PuTTY, try opening up the settings window for an existing session and see how many can be changed without having to restart afresh. Some of these could be changed in various more disjointed ways in Linux or Windows, but it's nicely unified and cross-platform in PuTTY. I'll admit I rarely leverage this flexibility, but it's cool enough that it seemed worth noting in this sub-thread about singing PuTTY's well-deserved praises.
  - snarfy 8y ago
    PuTTY is a real window, not that /subystem:console garbage that you can barely cut&paste from. Granted the console has gotten better in Windows 10, but still not nearly as good as a real window like PuTTY gives you. I'll probably keep using PuTTY for this reason.
    - zaat 8y ago
      Not sure what you are missing in the Windows 10 console. Granted, for their entire history Microsoft have shipped junk console, but that is simply not the case anymore.
      - op00to 8y ago
        It was almost usable in Windows 10, but the latest update broke cut and paste for me.
      - setquk 8y ago
        It’s still not great and it’s a lot slower than putty.
        floatboth 8y ago
        You can use ConEmu instead of the stock console.
        ocdtrekkie 8y ago
        cmd is pretty darn fast. PowerShell leaves a lot to be desired on the performance end though, takes a few seconds to load up the prompt. :/
        nailer 8y ago
        Powershell 6 has a way faster start time. https://github.com/mikemaccana/powershell-profile/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/mikemaccana/powershell-profile/blob/maste...
      - phil21 8y ago
- pizza 8y ago
  Same here, and I'd like to thank the developer(s) of KiTTY, too!
- justherefortart 8y ago
  Wow, I didn't realize putty was so new in 99. I just used it because I needed a set of good client tools on my windows box. Many thanks to them, they made my life so much easier in the early 2000s.
- NelsonMinar 8y ago
  PuTTY is indeed wonderful, and may still have a future because of its particular TTY emulator. The Windows vt100 emulator built into the command console isn't awful, but still has some rough edges. PuTTY has been well sanded down. And shout out also to SecureCRT which has been serving SSH client needs on Windows for even longer. Albeit commercial software, not open source.
- grawprog 8y ago
  Oh wow...it's been so long since i've used windows I forgot about PuTTY...that takes me back.
- gowld 8y ago
  The most prolific puzzle game maker and also the SSH savior!
- lloydatkinson 8y ago
  It also has a terrible UI, considering it's a 19 year old product that seeminly never gets updated. 1) The IP input field is a text box; meaning I can type in 24324.3453.546.12321 and there's no mask. 2) Weird mess of modal and non-modal dialogs. 3) On a related note, if I open a shell window, close the main PUTTY window, but then the shell didn't manage to connect... it presents an error dialog and closes all the windows. How fucking annoying is that? You then have to open the start menu and run PUTTY again. 4) Copy/Paste is a total joke. Want to copy just a line of bit of text? No you get the whole 20 pages worth of scrollbuffer copied into it. I really welcome this change. PUTTY had it's chance and they didn't even attempt to get a nice UI/UX.
  - Zekio 8y ago
    Pretty sure the input field is made to support IP, Hostname or Domain name
lostmsu 8y ago
No, the server does not run by default, as you'd assume from the title. Article just mentions, that the client is installed by default. Actual title was editorialized.
- agorabinary 8y ago
  Yes this is a misleading title. Please fix OP
- kingosticks 8y ago
  Perhaps bizarrely I actually thought the title meant it disabled it, in the same way that "turning on" something/someone is taking a dislike to it.
- edwinksl 8y ago
  Agree that the title is misleading.
  - nailer 8y ago
    Including the magic words 'dang' and 'please' can sometimes fix this.
dugmartin 8y ago
I've been meaning to enable this but I have a lot of hosts setup in ~/.ssh/config that is used by MINGW64's ssh (installed via Git for Windows). Does anyone know if Window's ssh client will pick up that config (or if having both ssh clients will cause issues)?
- Zekio 8y ago
  it will work if you add the ssh key to the ssh agent, I more or less copied my .ssh folder my WSL ubuntu install to my ~\.ssh folder and added my ssh key to the ssh agent :) EDIT: How ever to get tab completion on what is in your config file you will need something like https://github.com/lukesampson/pshazz https://github.com/lukesampson/pshazz
- sp332 8y ago
  Yup, you can either put it in %UserProfile%\.ssh\ssh_config or pass the -F <config_file> flag.
- JonathonW 8y ago
  The Windows ssh client pulls its config and keys from %USERPROFILE%/.ssh/, as does the Git for Windows ssh-- they can and will share the same config as long as the config's valid for both (OpenSSH is the same release, but the Windows build uses LibreSSL instead of OpenSSL, so you could conceivably write a config file that isn't compatible with both, I think?).
sigjuice 8y ago
The original title is way more accurate. Windows 10 OpenSSH Client Installed by Default in April 2018 Update
- supermdguy 8y ago
  Yeah, I thought it meant it was running an SSH server without the user's knowledge/consent.
  - gilnims 8y ago
    It doesn't matter if an SSH server is running or not. This is just another avenue for people's systems to be compromised and for malicious actors to exfil data securely. Couple the SSH addition with Excel natively running JavaScript functions means Windows-based hosts are now more lucrative than ever. For normal users, they have no use of a command-line SSH terminal, and they would likely not even know what such a function would be used for. Its just shitty decisions made by Microsoft with nearly no value added benefit.
Florin_Andrei 8y ago
This is good. I'm just not very enthusiastic about the Windows terminal. I've used PuTTY for a very long time and it works great. Its terminal is good too. More recently I've tended to use Cygwin instead. Its default terminal, MinTTY, is as close as you can get to a Linux terminal on Windows. And then Cygwin also offers the openssh client, of course. The notable thing about the recent related news, IMO, is not that openssh-client is shipped with Windows. It's that openssh-server is now an option. A server properly integrated with Windows, and officially supported, that's a good thing to have.
- andrewaylett 8y ago
  MinTTY was originally based on PuTTY and while I may be a bit biased (having been sitting next to the developer in our day job in the period when he started developing it), I think it's actually a nicer terminal than pretty much any other I've met. If only for the feature wherein if you click on the last line in the terminal (including any wrapping) it'll work out how many characters are needed to move the cursor to that position and issue that many arrow-key presses.
tambourine_man 8y ago
Having never really used Windows, except from a brief inter job as a kid, it seems to be getting better and better, to the point were I'm beginning to consider it as a viable alternative. Unix + Photoshop is what I need and MS seem to be coming from the other side by embracing Linux more and more.
- commandlinefan 8y ago
  I abandoned Windows 15 years ago; I switched over to Linux for about 7 years and then OS/X for 8 after that. I only returned to Windows this year, as it was required for a new job. Trust me: no, Windows is still as awful as it ever was.
  - mgkimsal 8y ago
    for what sort of workload? I'm primarily in text editors, IDEs, browsers and command line. jetbrains stuff is cross-platform, and I'm assuming runs well on windows. the surfacebook world looks enticing, and my macbook is ... well, i'm getting enticed by the surface world. What sort of problems do you encounter?
  - robbyt 8y ago
    I believe you, but I'm curious if you're using Windows 10? Also, what specifically is bad. (I'm a Linux desktop user since '99, MacOS since 08)
    - mr_toad 8y ago
      It’s still a major PITA to install & maintain many open source tools, like curl, Ffmpeg, wget etc. The tool chain is hit and miss. Recompiling Ffmpeg with h265 support is one command on MacOS. I just recently had to recompile a R package that depended on some fairly obscure third party libraries. No problem, just a couple of brew install commands. I’d hate to think how much manual work it would have taken to line up all the dependencies for that in Windows. Likely I’d have just given up.
    - commandlinefan 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
halfnibble 8y ago
It's about time. I was shocked when giving a "code along" presentation and found that none of my audience members with Windows 10 laptops could follow my presentation because the command prompt didn't have SSH. No SSH for crying out loud!

79 points by gilnims 8y ago

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

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
RIP my need for PuTTY going forward though, really. I guess I probably still need PuTTY for console cable maybe? But yes, hat tip to one incredibly handy piece of software.
- jkaplowitz 8y ago
  It's still the only SSH client I know that can change most of its settings during an existing session, especially in a cross-platform way (it is available for Linux). Good software indeed.
  - benjohnson 8y ago
    Forgive me for a dumb question, but I'm trying to be helpful. Are you talking about tunnels and port forwards? OpenSSH can do that - you type in an escape sequence and you can work your magic on the fly.
    - soccerdave 8y ago
      Just wanted to thank you for this answer. I never knew about OpenSSH escape sequences and I've used ssh for years. https://pleiades.ucsc.edu/hyades/SSH_Escape_Sequences https://pleiades.ucsc.edu/hyades/SSH_Escape_Sequences
    - jkaplowitz 8y ago
      No, I'm talking about a lot more settings than that including things about terminal emulation and keyboards. Next time you use PuTTY, try opening up the settings window for an existing session and see how many can be changed without having to restart afresh. Some of these could be changed in various more disjointed ways in Linux or Windows, but it's nicely unified and cross-platform in PuTTY. I'll admit I rarely leverage this flexibility, but it's cool enough that it seemed worth noting in this sub-thread about singing PuTTY's well-deserved praises.
- snarfy 8y ago
  PuTTY is a real window, not that /subystem:console garbage that you can barely cut&paste from. Granted the console has gotten better in Windows 10, but still not nearly as good as a real window like PuTTY gives you. I'll probably keep using PuTTY for this reason.
  - zaat 8y ago
    Not sure what you are missing in the Windows 10 console. Granted, for their entire history Microsoft have shipped junk console, but that is simply not the case anymore.
    - op00to 8y ago
      It was almost usable in Windows 10, but the latest update broke cut and paste for me.
    - setquk 8y ago
      It’s still not great and it’s a lot slower than putty.
      - floatboth 8y ago
        You can use ConEmu instead of the stock console.
      - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
        cmd is pretty darn fast. PowerShell leaves a lot to be desired on the performance end though, takes a few seconds to load up the prompt. :/
        nailer 8y ago
        Powershell 6 has a way faster start time. https://github.com/mikemaccana/powershell-profile/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/mikemaccana/powershell-profile/blob/maste...
    - phil21 8y ago
pizza 8y ago
Same here, and I'd like to thank the developer(s) of KiTTY, too!
justherefortart 8y ago
Wow, I didn't realize putty was so new in 99. I just used it because I needed a set of good client tools on my windows box. Many thanks to them, they made my life so much easier in the early 2000s.
NelsonMinar 8y ago
PuTTY is indeed wonderful, and may still have a future because of its particular TTY emulator. The Windows vt100 emulator built into the command console isn't awful, but still has some rough edges. PuTTY has been well sanded down. And shout out also to SecureCRT which has been serving SSH client needs on Windows for even longer. Albeit commercial software, not open source.
grawprog 8y ago
Oh wow...it's been so long since i've used windows I forgot about PuTTY...that takes me back.
gowld 8y ago
The most prolific puzzle game maker and also the SSH savior!
lloydatkinson 8y ago
It also has a terrible UI, considering it's a 19 year old product that seeminly never gets updated. 1) The IP input field is a text box; meaning I can type in 24324.3453.546.12321 and there's no mask. 2) Weird mess of modal and non-modal dialogs. 3) On a related note, if I open a shell window, close the main PUTTY window, but then the shell didn't manage to connect... it presents an error dialog and closes all the windows. How fucking annoying is that? You then have to open the start menu and run PUTTY again. 4) Copy/Paste is a total joke. Want to copy just a line of bit of text? No you get the whole 20 pages worth of scrollbuffer copied into it. I really welcome this change. PUTTY had it's chance and they didn't even attempt to get a nice UI/UX.
- Zekio 8y ago
  Pretty sure the input field is made to support IP, Hostname or Domain name

lostmsu 8y ago

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

agorabinary 8y ago
Yes this is a misleading title. Please fix OP
kingosticks 8y ago
Perhaps bizarrely I actually thought the title meant it disabled it, in the same way that "turning on" something/someone is taking a dislike to it.
edwinksl 8y ago
Agree that the title is misleading.
- nailer 8y ago
  Including the magic words 'dang' and 'please' can sometimes fix this.

dugmartin 8y ago

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

Zekio 8y ago
it will work if you add the ssh key to the ssh agent, I more or less copied my .ssh folder my WSL ubuntu install to my ~\.ssh folder and added my ssh key to the ssh agent :) EDIT: How ever to get tab completion on what is in your config file you will need something like https://github.com/lukesampson/pshazz https://github.com/lukesampson/pshazz
sp332 8y ago
Yup, you can either put it in %UserProfile%\.ssh\ssh_config or pass the -F <config_file> flag.
JonathonW 8y ago
The Windows ssh client pulls its config and keys from %USERPROFILE%/.ssh/, as does the Git for Windows ssh-- they can and will share the same config as long as the config's valid for both (OpenSSH is the same release, but the Windows build uses LibreSSL instead of OpenSSL, so you could conceivably write a config file that isn't compatible with both, I think?).

sigjuice 8y ago

The original title is way more accurate. Windows 10 OpenSSH Client Installed by Default in April 2018 Update

supermdguy 8y ago
Yeah, I thought it meant it was running an SSH server without the user's knowledge/consent.
- gilnims 8y ago
  It doesn't matter if an SSH server is running or not. This is just another avenue for people's systems to be compromised and for malicious actors to exfil data securely. Couple the SSH addition with Excel natively running JavaScript functions means Windows-based hosts are now more lucrative than ever. For normal users, they have no use of a command-line SSH terminal, and they would likely not even know what such a function would be used for. Its just shitty decisions made by Microsoft with nearly no value added benefit.

Florin_Andrei 8y ago

This is good. I'm just not very enthusiastic about the Windows terminal. I've used PuTTY for a very long time and it works great. Its terminal is good too. More recently I've tended to use Cygwin instead. Its default terminal, MinTTY, is as close as you can get to a Linux terminal on Windows. And then Cygwin also offers the openssh client, of course. The notable thing about the recent related news, IMO, is not that openssh-client is shipped with Windows. It's that openssh-server is now an option. A server properly integrated with Windows, and officially supported, that's a good thing to have.

andrewaylett 8y ago
MinTTY was originally based on PuTTY and while I may be a bit biased (having been sitting next to the developer in our day job in the period when he started developing it), I think it's actually a nicer terminal than pretty much any other I've met. If only for the feature wherein if you click on the last line in the terminal (including any wrapping) it'll work out how many characters are needed to move the cursor to that position and issue that many arrow-key presses.

tambourine_man 8y ago

Having never really used Windows, except from a brief inter job as a kid, it seems to be getting better and better, to the point were I'm beginning to consider it as a viable alternative. Unix + Photoshop is what I need and MS seem to be coming from the other side by embracing Linux more and more.

commandlinefan 8y ago
I abandoned Windows 15 years ago; I switched over to Linux for about 7 years and then OS/X for 8 after that. I only returned to Windows this year, as it was required for a new job. Trust me: no, Windows is still as awful as it ever was.
- mgkimsal 8y ago
  for what sort of workload? I'm primarily in text editors, IDEs, browsers and command line. jetbrains stuff is cross-platform, and I'm assuming runs well on windows. the surfacebook world looks enticing, and my macbook is ... well, i'm getting enticed by the surface world. What sort of problems do you encounter?
- robbyt 8y ago
  I believe you, but I'm curious if you're using Windows 10? Also, what specifically is bad. (I'm a Linux desktop user since '99, MacOS since 08)
  - mr_toad 8y ago
    It’s still a major PITA to install & maintain many open source tools, like curl, Ffmpeg, wget etc. The tool chain is hit and miss. Recompiling Ffmpeg with h265 support is one command on MacOS. I just recently had to recompile a R package that depended on some fairly obscure third party libraries. No problem, just a couple of brew install commands. I’d hate to think how much manual work it would have taken to line up all the dependencies for that in Windows. Likely I’d have just given up.
  - commandlinefan 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

halfnibble 8y ago

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