Geek Software of the Week: PuTTY
I can’t believe I haven’t already mentioned this one. If you are a Linux/Unix geek and need the command line, you will have probably used PuTTY. It is a great, free telnet/SSH client for Windows. Check it out!
“PuTTY is a free implementation of Telnet and SSH for Win32 and Unix platforms, along with an xterm terminal emulator. It is written and maintained primarily by Simon Tatham. PuTTY is a client program for the SSH, Telnet and Rlogin network protocols. These protocols are all used to run a remote session on a computer, over a network. PuTTY implements the client end of that session: the end at which the session is displayed, rather than the end at which it runs. In really simple terms: you run PuTTY on a Windows machine, and tell it to connect to (for example) a Unix machine. PuTTY opens a window. Then, anything you type into that window is sent straight to the Unix machine, and everything the Unix machine sends back is displayed in the window. So you can work on the Unix machine as if you were sitting at its console, while actually sitting somewhere else.”
(I might mention… PuTTY is a small, tight single file executable program, you don;t really “install” it. You just put the executable file in a directory, like: “C:\Program Files\PuTTY” and create a shortcut to “putty.exe.” That’s it! Back to the days when programs were programs and men were men!)
Me like Putty. I use it for just what you describe, connecting to a unix server from my Windows desktop. It was suggested to me by my server host when they informed me that telnet is a very insecure way to connect to a server and that SSH is better, something I didn’t know at the time.