Microsoft

Five SSH-ready clients for Windows and UNIX

By // October 22, 2012, 4:52 AM PST // jlwallen

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  • PuTTY 1

    This photo gallery is also available as a post in the Five Apps Blog.

    Every IT admin I know depends upon a secure shell at some point. It's the single best way to remotely administer a Linux or UNIX-based server. Secure shell allows you shell access to your servers, without the concern for transmitting plain-text passwords. Of course, shell access isn't limited to UNIX-like servers. Even Windows machines can run a secure shell server.

    But what about gaining access to those secure shell-enabled servers? What is the best method? Well, that all depends - do you like the command line, or do you like a nice GUI tool? The good news, you can have them both. In fact, I have found five of the best SSH-ready clients. All of these clients are free and very easy to use. You'll find clients for both Windows and Linux.

    Five Apps

    1. PuTTY

    PuTTY is probably the single most popular secure shell client for the Windows platform. It's incredibly easy to use, allows for the saving of profiles, and can be used as a portable tool.

    Credit: Images by Jack Wallen for TechRepublic

  • PuTTY 2

    PuTTY is not only free, but open source. PuTTY can also do telnet, rlogin, and raw TCP. PuTTY has built in support for the secure copy (scp) program.

    Credit: Images by Jack Wallen for TechRepublic

  • SEC Panel 1

    2. SecPanel

    SecPanel is a solid GUI secure shell tool for UNIX. SecPanel supports ssh, scp, and X Windows tunnelling. This ssh tool also has a built-in key generator and retains a history of your connections and key operations.

    Credit: Images by Jack Wallen for TechRepublic

  • SEC Panel 2

    Although the GUI does feel a bit outdated (depending upon the distribution you are using), it is a solid client for connecting to servers.

    Credit: Images by Jack Wallen for TechRepublic

  • Private Shell 1

    3. Private Shell

    Private Shell is the only client on the list with a price tag. At $49.95 for a commercial license ($29.95 for a non-commercial license), it might seem a bit steep. But when you look at the features (terminal connection, file transfer connection, database connection (MySQL, Oracle, Postgres, DB2), CVS/SVN repository access, SOCKS5 proxy, e-mail server connection, VNC server connection, X11 tunneling, and more), you quickly understand why it has the associated price.

    Credit: Images by Jack Wallen for TechRepublic

  • Private Shell 2

    To get those features on any other client, you'd wind up having to bundle other apps together. Private Shell also has an outstanding, user-friendly GUI. Private Shell is available only for Windows.

    Credit: Images by Jack Wallen for TechRepublic

  • Terra Term 1

    4. Terra Term

    Terra Term has been around for quite some time. However, the current version is recognized by the project's original creator.

    Credit: Images by Jack Wallen for TechRepublic

  • Terra Term 2

    Terra Term offers features such as: Serial port connections, TCP/IP (telnet, SSH-1/2) connections, IPv6 communication, VT100 emulation and selected VT200/300 emulation, TEK4010 emulation, file transfer protocols, its own scripting language, Japanese, English, Russian and Korean character sets, and UTF-8 character encoding. This is another Windows-only client.

    Credit: Images by Jack Wallen for TechRepublic

  • Terminal 1

    5. Linux terminal

    Linux terminal. That's right; I cannot create a list of secure shell clients without including the Linux command line equivalent. By default, nearly every Linux distribution has a secure shell client (ssh is the command). To connect to a server, you would typically open up a terminal window and issue a command similar to ssh -v -l jlwallen 192.168.1.1.

    Credit: Images by Jack Wallen for TechRepublic

  • Terminal 2

    Of course you will also have the scp (secure copy) command available, which makes the remote copying of files much more secure than standard ftp. Of course, this client is only available on Linux and UNIX-based platforms (Mac included).

    Credit: Images by Jack Wallen for TechRepublic

PuTTY 1

This photo gallery is also available as a post in the Five Apps Blog.

Every IT admin I know depends upon a secure shell at some point. It's the single best way to remotely administer a Linux or UNIX-based server. Secure shell allows you shell access to your servers, without the concern for transmitting plain-text passwords. Of course, shell access isn't limited to UNIX-like servers. Even Windows machines can run a secure shell server.

But what about gaining access to those secure shell-enabled servers? What is the best method? Well, that all depends - do you like the command line, or do you like a nice GUI tool? The good news, you can have them both. In fact, I have found five of the best SSH-ready clients. All of these clients are free and very easy to use. You'll find clients for both Windows and Linux.

Five Apps

1. PuTTY

PuTTY is probably the single most popular secure shell client for the Windows platform. It's incredibly easy to use, allows for the saving of profiles, and can be used as a portable tool.

Credit: Images by Jack Wallen for TechRepublic

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About Jack Wallen

Jack Wallen is an award-winning writer for TechRepublic and Linux.com. He’s an avid promoter of open source and the voice of The Android Expert. For more news about Jack Wallen, visit his website jackwallen.com.