Well I’d at least suggest it, and here’s why. For those of you reading this unfamiliar with PuTTY (can’t imagine anyone who’s come across this NOT familiar with it) see Wikipedia’s description below:
PuTTY (/ˈpʌti/)[3] is a free and open-source terminal emulator, serial console and network file transfer application. It supports several network protocols, including SCP, SSH, Telnet, rlogin, and raw socket connection. It can also connect to a serial port. The name “PuTTY” has no official meaning.[4]
I first familiarized myself with PuTTY when beginning my work on Cisco hardware. I had always used a terminal shell to SSH into anything. My first thoughts when encountering it was, “This looks like an integrated service on Windows 98 and hasn’t been maintained whatsoever.” Now this is not even remotely true, but I’m a sucker for aesthetics. Aesthetically speaking, PuTTY is downright gross.
When I started overly inundating myself with Rasperry Pi projects, I was using SSH, FTP, Telnet, and more so frequently it was kind of ridiculous. I stumbled upon a program when searching for a superior counterpart. What I found was MobaXterm. I seriously cannot imagine my daily life without it, I literally use it every single day.
The preceding image is the screen of a Pi I SSH’d into. My fav part of this tool is its integrated clipboard / bi-directional cut-pasting. If you’ve ever used virtualbox or another similar virtualization solution you know what I’m talking about here. The left pane is a graphical representation of the directory I’m in (but doesn’t always have to be the same as the CLI.) So, if I SSH into a /var/www/html directory and I have several folders on my desktop, I can literally just drag and drop into that pane and bam — transmitted over SFTP. You can do other things inside the tab on the left as well. Tools, Macros, and other sessions also are available here. This functionality is what makes this whole project here easier, In my opinion. There is so much more functionality compared to its counterpart, and most of all — it’s pretty…Really pretty. Here are some of the sessions you can initiate with MobaXterm
Here is a listing of the tools found in the menu. The one I find the most useful is the SSH key generator. All the tools work better than expected but this one I tend to use a lot. I don’t know about you, but I have a bad habit of rotating poorly named SSH keys.
MobaXterm allows you to setup sessions with a myriad of different devices, platforms, and operating systems. Below is a new window when you attempt to initiate a new connection.
So as you can see, there are a wide variety of options to choose from. I can have one source for my AWS buckets, my EC2 instances, my Pi terminals, and so much more. Another aspect I love about MobaXterm is the dynamic aspect of multi-terminal windows. I can sometimes get upwards of eight or nine going and can easily lose track. With this tool you can pull a tab down and give it its own window, minimize it, maximize it, move it somewhere else, and more. It’s quite intuitive to bounce around like this. Below is a view of a session when I attempt to open another one. You can see the familiar session options that I showed earlier.
Let’s not forget it does do an integrated host terminal as well
So if your an unorganized slob, sucker for aesthetics, or just hate PuTTY with a blind unprovoked hatred — This is a tool you should get ASAP. It’s free to download from their site, and there is also a paid version that offers more services. You can save terminal sessions so you just have to double-click to restart a past window. You’re limited to ten I believe on the free subscription. Zero ads, zero prompts to update, zero awareness that you could pay money for this tool and didn’t. I can’t thank this tool enough for all its done for me and felt I should spread the good news of the gospel of “Put The PuTTY Down” — If you read that in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s voice from Kindergarder Cop then we’ll get along great my friends. Go download MobaXterm now if you want something far more pleasing to look out, and a lot better in performance if you ask me.
