Finally! This article is about desktop, but OpenSSH is coming to all of Windows, including IoT Core where I work. I’ve been championing the upgrade for years now. Compared to our old SSH implementation, OpenSSH is more stable, supports newer encryption standards, and can send files over sftp.
Very excited to see this land. Kudos to the Powershell team for putting in most of the porting work, and of course to OpenBSD for developing OpenSSH in the first place.
Last time I tried anything microsofty in that sort of realm I started throwing things at the screen. (Can’t remember what it was telnet maybe? Their built in “term” thing?)
It obstinately refused to resize, and got the wrapping horribly wrong and clearly had been written by somebody who had an ideological hatred of the command line.
Downloaded putty and…. Oh My! It all just worked and worked correctly!
So merely having a ssh client will not cause me to shift from putty, having a ssh client that works properly and slickly might convince me.
Well, for IoT Core I’m more excited about the OpenSSH server than the client. I’ve been connecting to it with PuTTY.
That said, the Windows command-line has vastly improved from 8.1 to 10. The biggest improvement is that text reflows as you resize the window. Copy/paste was also improved.
Telnet and SSH are just transports. I bet your frustration was due to the old Windows conhost.exe being a terrible terminal.
AFAIK some projects such as the Git command line utilities for Windows have for years now shipped with a TTY which is based on PuTTY’s TTY (just not using any of the SSH code or anything) and it’s much nicer.
Try cmder for a decent terminal. The git version comes with a bunch of tools (including ssh, ls, etc) and provides a terminal experience on Windows that won’t make you throw things at the screen (hopefully!).
I’m curious to see how POSIX-compliant the Windows terminal is; when I tried ssh with the Linux subsystem, the Windows terminal couldn’t display Mutt correctly, I think because it was struggling with curses’ heavy usage of escape sequences, but I’m not sure. I ended up having to use MobaXTerm, which is perhaps my least favorite piece of software I still end up using every day. Getting to switch to something lighter and with fewer attention-grabby bits all around my workspace would be excellent.
On that note, if anyone here knows any good, simple terminals for Windows (my dream is alacritty or st, but for Windows), I would love to hear about them!
I’ve been using ConEmu for the last six months. While it’s not a POSIX-compliant terminal, I found out that it performs fairly well with most. I haven’t used it with Mutt, though, but Vim works just fine.
The windows terminal is still crap compared to Putty or even some of the various cygterms out there. I guess you could just install one via apt-get from the Ubuntu/Linux subsystem. Maybe MS should focus more of an integrated X11 rootless server first so people don’t have to install 3rd party ones?
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… how in the world is Microsoft going to extinguish SSH? How can Microsoft extinguish core infrastructure in widely-used OSes they have no control over?
There’s lots of potential extensions to standards in CompSci that improve pain points that exist anywhere from individual use to enterprises. They could do an extension for one of those they buy or tweak a bit to slap a patent on. Obfuscate it a bit, too. Then, they deliver that advantageous benefit in their version. It gets widespread after a Windows release or two. Once people are locked into it, they can extend it in some new ways. Maybe some cool tricks like SSH proxies for Microsoft applications, VPN’s into their cloud, or something for Xbox Live like people used to do with LogMeIn Hamachi. They might even be cross-licensing it to third parties. Those might have already built stuff on it since it’s in Windows at no cost to them.
You’re not on open-source SSH any more with those applications. Now, you’re depending on their tech that plays by their rules on their paid platforms. It’s also called SSH so anyone Googling for SSH on Windows might find the “genuine software.” ;)
It gets widespread after a Windows release or two.
Here’s the point which doesn’t add up. It won’t become “widespread” beyond the desktop world.
A lot of things are widespread in the Windows world and not really beyond it, so Microsoft could do this to those things, but SSH is not one of them, and is not going to become one of them.
I’m aware of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. I was alive and aware in the 1990s. I’m also alive and aware in a world where Linux and Open Source in general is so widespread that it isn’t going away.
Finally! This article is about desktop, but OpenSSH is coming to all of Windows, including IoT Core where I work. I’ve been championing the upgrade for years now. Compared to our old SSH implementation, OpenSSH is more stable, supports newer encryption standards, and can send files over sftp.
Very excited to see this land. Kudos to the Powershell team for putting in most of the porting work, and of course to OpenBSD for developing OpenSSH in the first place.
Last time I tried anything microsofty in that sort of realm I started throwing things at the screen. (Can’t remember what it was telnet maybe? Their built in “term” thing?)
It obstinately refused to resize, and got the wrapping horribly wrong and clearly had been written by somebody who had an ideological hatred of the command line.
Downloaded putty and…. Oh My! It all just worked and worked correctly!
So merely having a ssh client will not cause me to shift from putty, having a ssh client that works properly and slickly might convince me.
Well, for IoT Core I’m more excited about the OpenSSH server than the client. I’ve been connecting to it with PuTTY.
That said, the Windows command-line has vastly improved from 8.1 to 10. The biggest improvement is that text reflows as you resize the window. Copy/paste was also improved.
Telnet and SSH are just transports. I bet your frustration was due to the old Windows conhost.exe being a terrible terminal.
When you connect to IoT Core via SSH what shell are you dropped in to?
Just plain old CMD. Usually Powershell is present too, but OEMs can choose to build an image without Powershell.
If you want to connect directly to a Powershell session, it has its own remote shell feature, enter-pssession.
There’s a more detailed answer by Joey Aiello in the HN thread.
AFAIK some projects such as the Git command line utilities for Windows have for years now shipped with a TTY which is based on PuTTY’s TTY (just not using any of the SSH code or anything) and it’s much nicer.
ConEmu is another tool that will improve your commandline life on Windows. As for Microsoft products, there are many people who swear by Powershell!
Powershell is a nice shell, but it lives inside the same terminal (conhost.exe) that CMD does.
Cmder is a great shell built on top of ConEmu that even has support for the quake-style appear/disappear animation.
Try cmder for a decent terminal. The git version comes with a bunch of tools (including ssh, ls, etc) and provides a terminal experience on Windows that won’t make you throw things at the screen (hopefully!).
That’s pretty impressive. OpenSSH makes a lot of POSIX assumptions about things like PTYs and fork.
I spent too much time configuring my PuTTY color scheme to give up now!
Keep it! Conhost.exe theming is still terrible.
releasewould be a good tag for something covering a new piece of software or functionality.I’m curious to see how POSIX-compliant the Windows terminal is; when I tried ssh with the Linux subsystem, the Windows terminal couldn’t display Mutt correctly, I think because it was struggling with curses’ heavy usage of escape sequences, but I’m not sure. I ended up having to use MobaXTerm, which is perhaps my least favorite piece of software I still end up using every day. Getting to switch to something lighter and with fewer attention-grabby bits all around my workspace would be excellent.
On that note, if anyone here knows any good, simple terminals for Windows (my dream is
alacrittyorst, but for Windows), I would love to hear about them!I’ve been using ConEmu for the last six months. While it’s not a POSIX-compliant terminal, I found out that it performs fairly well with most. I haven’t used it with Mutt, though, but Vim works just fine.
The windows terminal is still crap compared to Putty or even some of the various cygterms out there. I guess you could just install one via apt-get from the Ubuntu/Linux subsystem. Maybe MS should focus more of an integrated X11 rootless server first so people don’t have to install 3rd party ones?
PuTTY’s great, but I said farewell some years ago in favour of the superior KiTTY.
Reminder:
Embrace, Extend, …
… how in the world is Microsoft going to extinguish SSH? How can Microsoft extinguish core infrastructure in widely-used OSes they have no control over?
Don’t question the meme.
There’s lots of potential extensions to standards in CompSci that improve pain points that exist anywhere from individual use to enterprises. They could do an extension for one of those they buy or tweak a bit to slap a patent on. Obfuscate it a bit, too. Then, they deliver that advantageous benefit in their version. It gets widespread after a Windows release or two. Once people are locked into it, they can extend it in some new ways. Maybe some cool tricks like SSH proxies for Microsoft applications, VPN’s into their cloud, or something for Xbox Live like people used to do with LogMeIn Hamachi. They might even be cross-licensing it to third parties. Those might have already built stuff on it since it’s in Windows at no cost to them.
You’re not on open-source SSH any more with those applications. Now, you’re depending on their tech that plays by their rules on their paid platforms. It’s also called SSH so anyone Googling for SSH on Windows might find the “genuine software.” ;)
Here’s the point which doesn’t add up. It won’t become “widespread” beyond the desktop world.
A lot of things are widespread in the Windows world and not really beyond it, so Microsoft could do this to those things, but SSH is not one of them, and is not going to become one of them.
I’m aware of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. I was alive and aware in the 1990s. I’m also alive and aware in a world where Linux and Open Source in general is so widespread that it isn’t going away.
Isn’t that the GNU philosophy? ;)
They are pretty similar in mechanism haha.