
PuTTY Tray - gprasanth
https://puttytray.goeswhere.com/
======
pathy
Alternatives to PuTTY linked in the thread so far:

[https://puttytray.goeswhere.com/](https://puttytray.goeswhere.com/)

[https://code.google.com/p/futty/](https://code.google.com/p/futty/)

[https://code.google.com/p/superputty/](https://code.google.com/p/superputty/)

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

[http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2009/03/putty-extreme-
makeover-u...](http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2009/03/putty-extreme-makeover-
using-putty-connection-manager/)

Which one is the best? I currently use Putty Tray, for no real reason except
that someone linked it to me awhile back and it is, imo, better than vanilla
PuTTY. But how does it compare to the alternatives?

Edit: added more!

~~~
ollybee
It's not a matter of which one is best, it's which one do I trust. I know
source is available but these applications may not be subject to the kind of
scrutiny and monitoring that better know packages might be. How long would it
take before anyone noticed if the binaries for one of these was altered? How
difficult would it be to carry out spear phishing attack against one of the
authors allowing that to happen?

~~~
VLM
That's an accurate summary of the threat looking back in time. Looking forward
in time, when a bug is found, which has a larger mass of humanity working to
fix it, the intensely scrutinized original, or a UI theme mod that about ten
people use?

This is the kind of thing that always scares me away from little two person
linux distros forked off a "real" distro. Imagine in six months there's yet
another mistake in Debian's SSL libs much like happened before. Or insert your
own analogy. Who's more likely to quickly push patches out, the thousands in
the Debian keyring pushing the hundreds who are active pushing the tens who
are into security pushing the (small number) in the FTPmaster team to push the
patched packages out as fast as 100 wpm keyboards humanly allow, or the two
guys who made Zombie-nix which is merely a fork of Debian with everything they
don't personally like removed, a scarey animated gif zombie themed boot
screen, and some "marketing", who can't be reached because they're out
camping, drinking, and shining deer until next month? (not that there's
anything wrong with camping and drinking, although deer shining I suppose
depends on your state/local laws)

~~~
jessaustin
_...deer shining I suppose depends on your state /local laws_

Hey, spotlighting is a traditional hunting technique of my people!

------
FauxFaux
[https://github.com/FauxFaux/PuTTYTray/wiki/Other-forks-of-
Pu...](https://github.com/FauxFaux/PuTTYTray/wiki/Other-forks-of-PuTTY) _edits
madly_

------
linker3000
It's probably a great app - but PLEASE datestamp update release notes
announcement etc so I know the age of what I'm reading and whether I'm seeing
a development/change history stretching over 3 months or 3 years etc.

~~~
thejosh
This is one of the reasons why I love GitHub/Google Code - you can see the
commits they have made and see how active a project is before jumping into it.

~~~
FauxFaux
A problem with both of these is when the stable branch of the project is
reasonably dead (on account of being stable, and, say, hasn't had a release
for 8 months[0]), but the actual development branch[1](es[2]) are much more
alive, nearly even this week.

[0]
[https://github.com/FauxFaux/PuTTYTray/tags/](https://github.com/FauxFaux/PuTTYTray/tags/)
[1]
[https://github.com/FauxFaux/PuTTYTray/commits/next](https://github.com/FauxFaux/PuTTYTray/commits/next)
[2]
[https://github.com/FauxFaux/PuTTYTray/commits/unix2](https://github.com/FauxFaux/PuTTYTray/commits/unix2)

------
barryhaanstra
What I never really got is why Simon Tatham refuses to improve the original
PuTTY. He must know it is used mainly on Windows (is anyone actually using the
Unix version?).

His wishlist stated that tray support was tricky
([http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/wishlist/s...](http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/wishlist/system-
tray.html)), but when I wrote the original Tray patch I was shocked to find
that I could do it with a few lines of code (and I didn't have any experience
with C or the Windows API)...

~~~
asveikau
Reading the wish list I do get the impression that he doesn't have a great
intuition about Win32. (My own background: I worked in the Windows division at
MSFT for a few years). Particularly telling is the item about not knowing what
form of IPC to use to simulate Unix domain sockets in pagent (no mention of
Win32 rpc or named pipes), alongside some weird ideas about SendMessage and
modal dialogs... Or the part where he says he won't do a wince port since he'd
have to rewrite with wide strings (not that wince is as relevant as it used to
be). I am surprised that the author of such great windows software is writing
some of these things.

It does bear repeating though that putty is a great application and the list
of stuff he has knocked off on his changelog (same page as the wish list)
looks impressive.

------
twodayslate
I've been using this for a while. It is just like normal putty except it can
launch/minimize to the tray. That's the only thing I needed so it was perfect
for me. I haven't tried any of the other forks listed here and have had no
reason not too.

------
mmsimanga
These days I use MobaXterm for SSH and SFTP
[http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/](http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/) MobaXterm is an
excellent program and that has way more features than I actually use.

~~~
Nux
+1 for MobaXterm!

Excellent program, includes bash and some other basic linux tools and an X
server so you can run forwarded applications via SSH. It doesn't beat running
an actual linux distro, but it's the closest thing to it that I've found.

------
samuel337
With some of these alternatives that wrap the PuTTY executable, it is worth
pointing out that if you provide the wrapper with the password to login with
(as opposed to typing it in the PuTTY console window), it will probably just
pass the password to PuTTY as a command line argument. This means that the
password will be visible in plain text to any other process running as you or
any elevated user/process (unlike on Linux, I don't think you can view
detailed information about another user's processes, like the full command
line, without elevation).

I have verified this with SuperPuTTY - just launch a session by entering the
credentials in the toolbar then use the following PowerShell command to see it
-

    
    
      get-wmiobject win32_process -filter "name like 'putty.exe'" | select commandline
    

Alternatively, fire up Process Explorer from live.sysinternals.com.

~~~
throwaway2048
automaticly inputting passwords is a terrible idea, please use ssh keys (and
password them!). Pageant makes doing this not a pain, plus stuff like
filezilla will automaticly use pageant keys to login for sftp!

[http://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/0.62/htmldoc/Chapter8.ht...](http://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/0.62/htmldoc/Chapter8.html)

[http://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/0.62/htmldoc/Chapter9.ht...](http://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/0.62/htmldoc/Chapter9.html#pageant)

------
josteink
Personally I prefer FuTTY which includes a decent mish-mash of patches and
modifications.

[https://code.google.com/p/futty/](https://code.google.com/p/futty/)

Supports all kind of terminals, like telnet, ssh, adb, cygterm, etc. Supports
clickable links. Good unicode/wide-char support.

------
A321
How does it compare to Kitty [0]?

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

------
swatkat
I use Putty Connection Manager, which has a pretty good tabbed interface.

[http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2009/03/putty-extreme-
makeover-u...](http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2009/03/putty-extreme-makeover-
using-putty-connection-manager/)

------
gprasanth
Whoa! there seem to be a lot of forks for the original PuTTY.

I never used anything else other than this and putty itself.

Perhaps there should be a wiki page for "Comparision of PuTTY Forks" on
wikipedia.

------
l0c0b0x
I've been using xShell for quite some time now, it has great 'supported'
automation features, links, tab based, x support, session saves, etc..

This is a free product for schools and home users :). I highly suggest using
it.

[http://www.netsarang.com/products/xsh_key_features.html](http://www.netsarang.com/products/xsh_key_features.html)

------
wesleyd
I use putty _and_ cygwin openssh on windows. (In fact, I use putty as my
terminal on windows.)

Having to have two separate ssh-agents annoyed me, so I hacked together
something that let me use just pageant:
[https://github.com/wesleyd/charade](https://github.com/wesleyd/charade)

------
drv
I used to use PuTTY; however, Cygwin provides a more consistent environment
with other Unixy systems (standard OpenSSH with all of its normal
configuration files and key formats, plus an X server), and MinTTY provides a
nice native-feeling terminal emulator (originally based on PuTTY).

------
drivers99
Does anyone actually find URL hyperlinking useful? Kitty has that as well and
it just causes me problems. There are URLs in logs that I look at, and I do
not want to click on them but do sometimes. (I've since gone back to PuTTY.)

------
mcx
I recommend mputty if you are looking for something with tabs/window
splitting: [http://ttyplus.com/multi-tabbed-putty/](http://ttyplus.com/multi-
tabbed-putty/)

------
freeman478
I am using mRemoteNG ([http://www.mremoteng.org/](http://www.mremoteng.org/)).

What's great is that in one tabbed interface I can do VNC / RDP and SSH
connections.

~~~
yashau
+1 for mRemoteNG. It's by far the best of all I've tried.

~~~
linker3000
Well, if we're counting votes, you can have one from me too mRemoteNG's tabbed
interface and supported protocols really helps with remote/local support

------
zokier
Nice to see this maintained again, I used it in the 0.59 period, but changed
to vanilla putty when 0.60 came and puttytray wasn't updated (iirc, might have
been 0.61 too)

------
nodata
Comparison to SuperPuTTY?
[https://code.google.com/p/superputty/](https://code.google.com/p/superputty/)

------
q_revert
just in case there's anyone who hasn't seen it before, Xming[0] combined with
{putty,kitty,alternative} allows you to `ssh -X host`

[0]
[http://sourceforge.net/projects/xming/](http://sourceforge.net/projects/xming/)

------
ozh
tabs?

~~~
mooism2
Tabs are evidence of poor window management capabilities on the part of the
host windowing environment, which is why they are ubiquitous in PC web
browsers.

~~~
muppetman
This comment is evidence of poor reference citing capabilities on the part of
the original commenter, which is why such comments are ubiquitous in Hacker
News threads.

~~~
mooism2
Not every comment on HN is intended to eventually make it unscathed onto
Wikipedia.

I intended to spark discussion around the question _“Why do so many people
want applications to provide tabbed windows?”_. I can see that people might
have misinterpreted my comment as attacking the OC for wanting tabs (wanting
tabs is a rational response to not having faith in the OS's window management
capabilities) or as an attack on MS-Windows (I used PC as opposed to
tablets/phones, which use non-windowed guis; so to include Macs/Gnome/KDE/etc;
perhaps there is an obscure windowing environment that allows me to group and
manage tens of windows without the aid of application-level tabs, but I am not
aware of it). Never mind.

(No references: original research.)

------
rob22
superputty is quite good compare than other putty .

------
phyalow
Putty - may aswell install cygwin then a X11 windowing manager!

------
sneak
If you're not going to own a mac (to run MacOS), why on Earth would you run
Windows?!

~~~
WayneDB
You should answer the question: Why would you not run Windows?

Then, depending on how well I think you've answered that question - perhaps
I'll answer yours.

~~~
sneak
The only reason I use Apple software products versus open source ones is
because of their incredibly well-executed integration of hardware and
software.

If you switch away from Apple hardware or Apple software, you lose that - and
at that point, the huge benefits of open source software (if only from the
security side) outweigh any potential benefits of Microsoft value-adds.

I might argue in favor of Microsoft software if they'd switched gears years
ago, and now Windows 8 was simultaneously released coupled with a laptop as
polished as a Macbook Air from a few generations back. Unfortunately, PC
hardware has spent the last few years playing catch-up with Apple hardware
(c.f. "ultrabook" silliness) and, even were that race to be nearing an end
(it's not), there'd be the non-trivial task of appropriately coupling software
to the optimized hardware.

It just ain't gonna happen. It's enough of a win to get me to eschew open-
source crypto for medium-value stuff (e.g. I still PGP confidential stuff, but
use FileVault for disk).

I honestly wish that someone else made a laptop as high quality as the MBAir,
and that Ubuntu (or any other open source option, but Canonical is the only
contender really) spent the time and resources to make a truly polished
release specifically for it.

The Chromebook Pixel comes to mind (excellent hardware and near-perfectly
aligned software (though it is missing pinch-to-zoom)), but having to trust
the vendor to that extent (signed OS, etc) undermines the benefits of an open-
source stack anyway.

It may well come to pass that the ideal machine for a hacker is something like
a Pixel in developer mode to allow for a toolchain. I'd have probably bought
one instead of the rMBP I use now if it had come with more local storage and
could run real apps (I edit video in FCP and have a 250GB photo library in
Aperture).

Google needs to stop touting "the cloud" so much and make ChromeOS a serious
contender. It's almost there, and the MBAir knock—err, ultrabooks are really
catching up. I love the idea of a thin client but until commonplace WAN
connections are two+ orders of magnitude faster, I'm not going to be able to
relocate my HD video NLE's execution environment to the Googleplex. We're
getting closer to that day for photos and audio.

There's no place for closed-source stuff in that world, though.

Apple's only winning the handset war with the closed-source model right now
because of their hardware advantage. Microsoft doesn't have that angle.

~~~
WayneDB
Alright, I think I can see where you're coming from.

To answer your original question with just one of the possible reasons that
people might run Windows - developers specifically in this example - it's
because they are developing programs that will integrate tightly into the
Microsoft/Windows software ecosystem. Why? Because millions upon millions of
business and consumers run Windows. Why? Because it does what they need it to.

Now, I will address the points you made in your answer.

> ... incredibly well-executed integration of hardware and software.

What specifically? In general, that's highly debatable. It's not incredible
because I have plenty of other hardware that is tightly integrated to it's
operating system. For instance: My Android tablet or phone, Samsung Smart TV,
Surface Pro, Google Glass and even my car (Tesla Model S).

Honestly, you'll have to be more specific about what in fact is so well-
executed...

Here's my opinion: It's not well-executed, at least not anymore so than at
least half a dozen other PC products that I can think of. I have a Macbook Pro
and I can't even make the external monitor turn off without having to
physically turn it off. Windows has had the ability to turn off the external
monitor since 1998 - by switching from a multi-monitor profile to a single
one.

Furthermore, what they do offer is extremely limited; bare-bones. For
instance, you'll never have an integrated fingerprint scanner in your laptop.
You'll never have convenient, clearly-labeled physical media-player buttons
(play, stop, ff, rewind, volume). You'll never have a professional Wacom
digitizer pen that draws right onto the screen like my Surface Pro. You'll
never have the Thinkpad/Lenovo mouse-dot-thing that many people love. Why?
Because Apple would rather convince their customers that "less is more" by all
means, in pursuit of higher profit-margins on their hardware.

In general, can you think of a reason that people might view "tightly
integrated" as a negative though? Just why is it that every financial
institution on the planet is running Microsoft software (at the very least)
and not Apple?

> ... the huge benefits of open source software.

This is humorous. Apple is the purveyor of one of the most closed-source
computing hardware and software ecosystems in the world. Their OS is so
closed, that if you wanted to make a replacement for the Dock that doesn't
have a particularly nasty bug, you wouldn't be able to. I know this because I
did research on that very topic and I found that non-Apple software cannot
access the API that the Dock uses to change NSScreen.visibleFrame. Turns out
there are a lot of APIs like that in the Apple universe.

At least Microsoft has (historically) left such APIs open. Now thanks to Apple
being so successful at fleecing people with their walled-garden salad -
Microsoft is following suit in their Mobile/Consumer products.

> Unfortunately, PC hardware has spent the last few years playing catch-up
> with Apple hardware...

You mean like how Mac Pro users waited 4-5 years for an update? Oh, did you
want to limit this to just laptops? What comparisons are we making here? Give
me a Macbook model and I'll compare it to something else that was available at
the time. There's really no need to wonder about this, the facts are available
on this point if we can be specific.

> Apple's only winning the handset war with the closed-source model right now
> because of their hardware advantage. Microsoft doesn't have that angle.

In what way? Market-share? Profit-margins? Global/National? I'm pretty sure
Android is winning in market-share.
[http://pocketnow.com/2013/06/04/smartphone-os-marketshare-
ap...](http://pocketnow.com/2013/06/04/smartphone-os-marketshare-april)

I'm gonna need you to go ahead and give me some more specifics. A for effort
though.

~~~
sneak
You are misunderstanding my argument, but it's late and I'm not getting into a
Mac vs Windows debate in 2013, though you get points for making me almost
consider it for a second.

~~~
WayneDB
> You are misunderstanding my argument

Not at all. I quoted each point that I responded to. Which one do you think
was misunderstood?

> I'm not getting into a Mac vs Windows debate in 2013

Hopefully next time you'll realize that _before_ you invite one by making
bigoted comments towards the vast, vast majority of people who run (and
prefer) Windows.

In any case, it's time for me to check my mail in my open source email client
(Thunderbird) after I close this (mostly) open source web browser (Chrome) and
then I'm going to get back to developing some closed source software using
some of Microsoft's open source .NET packages before I go to bed. Good night!

