
Pretty PuTTY – Better PuTTY Settings - JacKTrocinskI
https://github.com/jacktrocinski/pretty-putty
======
grenoire
Putty definitely requires you to edit its default settings, but I was in
general really surprised at the level of control you have (on a Windows
application).

Side note: Am I in the minority for disliking how Solarized looks? It's so
damn popular but I really can't seem to find its appeal.

~~~
saagarjha
Voice for Solarized: I use it everywhere, because it’s popular, consistent,
and not horrible to look at. This means I can have essentially the same color
scheme everywhere, which is nice, plus the light/dark themes are very easy to
make (which, conveniently, reduces the amount of syntax highlighting CSS on my
website quite a bit: the only thing I need to have “dark mode” is changing the
background color). I’m not completely sold on the “algorithmically perfected,
better for your eyes, etc.” stuff but I do think it’s not horrible, which is
not a guarantee I can make about $DEFAULT_COLOR_SCHEME_FOR_RANDOM_EDITOR.

~~~
pletnes
I think it’s great too, but a lot of the community implementations somehow
mess up the color codes in practice.

------
spacenick88
I really don't use Windows all that often but when I do I now really prefer to
use WSL and a proper OpenSSH or mosh. Even running in the default Terminal
it's still nicer than PuTTY, if I have the choice though (and when the next
version fixes input of AltGr (does not apply to US keyboards)) I prefer to use
the Windows version of alacritty.

~~~
sp332
The latest Windows update (last week) broke the ssh-agent in WSL. The ssh
client will bluescreen your PC if you make a connection with a key loaded into
the agent.

~~~
nikomen
Is it broken in the latest stable release (1809) or preview release (1903)?
Anecdotally, I'm running the latest preview release and ssh within WSL is
functioning. My ssh-agent does load a key when starting WSL and asks for a
password for the key.

~~~
sp332
According to
[https://www.reddit.com/r/bashonubuntuonwindows/comments/b0o6...](https://www.reddit.com/r/bashonubuntuonwindows/comments/b0o6v6/after_update_ssh_to_remote_hosts_cause_blue_screen/)
it's caused by KB4489868.

------
shoover
I spent some time recently cleaning up my Putty sessions. My goal was to
control all colors in the Putty settings and have everything look good with
tmux, bash, and emacs out of the box. The result was basically what the OP
arrived at. It works well as long as the Putty and tmux terminal types match
(e.g. putty-256color and tmux-256color, respectively) with the exception of
emacs isearch highlighting, which has bad contrasting defaults that also
obscure the foreground text of the current match (why do we even bother with
cyan and magenta?).

Here's a Ruby script that may be of use to paint over existing sessions using
various color schemes gathered from around github and translated to Ruby data.
[https://gist.github.com/shoover/40a35c07a32de16af9b2f79ca933...](https://gist.github.com/shoover/40a35c07a32de16af9b2f79ca933f4ac)

------
fibo
I also wrote an article with my Putty settings: [http://g14n.info/2014/06/my-
putty-settings/](http://g14n.info/2014/06/my-putty-settings/)

------
navaati
TIL that Putty's settings are stored in the Registry…

~~~
tsukurimashou
I discovered that when I customized my settings and wanted to port my colors
to another system

~~~
fb03
You guys should try this:

[http://www.9bis.net/kitty/](http://www.9bis.net/kitty/)

it's a fork of PuTTY with a portable mode which stores everything inside a
.ini file. It's amazingly easy to move/backup/etc.

~~~
dod9er
But it has not the newest security fixes for putty :(

~~~
24gttghh
PuTTY was only updated 6 days ago...so I don't find that terribly worrying for
a fork. The update history for KiTTY seems to imply it would get updated
soon.[0] e.g. the .69 and .70 updates were merged within a few weeks the last
time...

[0][http://www.9bis.net/kitty/?action=news&zone=en](http://www.9bis.net/kitty/?action=news&zone=en)

------
teekert
If Ubuntu on WSL would have paste by right/middle click and copy on select (or
better if Windows had this in general!) I wouldn't use putty anymore.

Still a nice terminal is very welcome, a good dropdown terminal (with
bash/wsl, not powershell) would be really really great.

~~~
013
I've been using this and seems to have all the functionality you'd want.

[https://github.com/mintty/wsltty](https://github.com/mintty/wsltty)

~~~
pletnes
Yes! The same can be said for git-bash which uses mintty and doesn’t require
you to install a new operating system (almost).

~~~
teekert
Yes git-bash is really surprisingly good for a "by product".

------
nailer
Putty was great in 2005, but Windows now includes OpenSSH as part of the OS.
Combine that with Fluent Terminal, Hyper 3 Canary or Terminus (or maybe
alacritty if you have a tabbed WM) and you can have a much better terminal
than what Putty provides.

------
raesene9
My preference for Windows SSH moved from PuTTY to MobaXterm
[https://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/](https://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/).

It's got a load of useful features, like tabbing, embedded X Servers, which
makes things easier.

~~~
nzjrs
Oh wow. Great find. Thanks for the tip!

------
xurukefi
I found that the `putty-256color` terminal does not really work well with
utilities using more advanced TUIs such as ncurses.

~~~
thristian
The `putty-256color` terminal description (like most terminal descriptions) is
hand-made by the ncurses maintainer, for maximum compatibility with ncurses.
What problems have you encountered?

~~~
xurukefi
When i use the `ncdu` utility for example it does not highlight selected
entries when using `putty-256color`. Example:
[https://i.imgur.com/ZibnkOm.png](https://i.imgur.com/ZibnkOm.png) (left
`putty-256color`, right `xterm`). Maybe this is a shortcoming of the `ncdu`
utility or an issue with some of my other putty settings. I never tried to
pinpoint it as it doesn't really affect most of the terminal work I do.

------
rk06
Can anyone tell me what are the advantages of putty over ssh (from gitbash or
openssh wsl)?

~~~
vbezhenar
Putty is a standard Windows application with good GUI and proper integrations.
I prefer good GUI apps whenever possible. Not sure of any particular
advantage, but terminal is definitely better with putty.

~~~
pricecomstock
PuTTY definitely works well but calling the GUI "good" might be a stretch.
It's pretty unintuitive. As a quick example, I'm always feel like clicking
"save" is going to save over the highlighted session settings instead of
inserting the new session name I've typed in the box.

Also in general changing settings is clunky enough that this post is about a
tool that edits the registry directly so that you don't have to change
settings through the GUI.

~~~
vbezhenar
I agree but that's pretty small issue and it's easy to use once you understood
it. Another issue is that I always forgetting where default username is
located (it's in Connection\Data). But overall it's usable and it's much
faster to navigate in GUI rather than reading ssh manual, especially when you
need that option once in a few years.

------
jrochkind1
The font in those screenshots still seems pretty terrible to me. Does putty
let you choose your own font? I know I've seen some fine font-rendering in
some Windows apps, is there any reason certain apps would not render as smooth
glyphs as the best?

~~~
tapland
Just change "Font"="Consolas" to what you feel like in the .reg file?

~~~
JacKTrocinskI
Yes :)

------
nyuszika7h
> Seconds between keepalives set to 59

Why not 60?

------
kaetemi
Ugh. Bigger font design trends.

