SSH in Windows !!! Yes you heard that right 😍
Surprised ??? Well, I too had the same reaction when I came to know about this feature in Windows. Let me brief you about how I got to know about this feature in Windows.
I had been using Ubuntu Linux for last 2 yrs. For some reason I had to settle myself with a Windows system during these COVID’19 pandemic times. I was just doing some random stuffs and out of nowhere I opened a command prompt shell and typed ssh after my mentor Monik Raj asked me to try it. I had also tried the same earlier and as usual I was expecting a response similar to this 👇
But this time, to my astonishment and excitement, I found output like this 👇. Wanna checkout ???
VOILA !!!
Long story short, I was too happy when I saw this unexpected result. I don’t know about you if you knew this earlier. But if you didn’t know, then go and try it out now !! What are you waiting for !!! Then went on to try out few of our own favorite Linux ssh features such as :-
SSHing into a remote machine. I tried with a digital ocean Ubuntu droplet and was able to connect to the remote machine with SSH and access it right from my command prompt. Here’s the snapshot of it.
I tried other stuffs such as adding a SSH key to my GitLab/GitHub account and cloning a repo with SSH. Everything worked fine as expected. Because it’s a bit irritating and PIA in windows system which asks for ID and Password every time you wish to push or pull something from a repo, but now with SSH feature in Windows system, it’s definitely a relief. As I have not explored all of the essence of it yet, I assume other ssh features will also work smoothly without much pain as it would work in a Linux or Mac system. Do check it yourself. I will do too bdw 😁.
Okay. Now the question is where can you get this ???
Microsoft announced it was bringing an integrated OpenSSH client to Windows in 2015. They’ve finally done it, and an SSH client is hidden in Windows 10’s Fall Creators Update. You can now connect to an Secure Shell server from Windows without installing PuTTY or any other third-party software.
Update: The built-in SSH client is now enabled by default in Windows 10’s April 2018 Update. Here’s how to get the update if you don’t already have it on your PC. (Source : https://www.howtogeek.com/336775/how-to-enable-and-use-windows-10s-built-in-ssh-commands/)
Before this, I used to work (when with a Windows system) with PuTTY, a third party software which enables all ssh features in it. This is what a putty window looks like.
With PuTTY, you get a lot SSH features, but now with built-in SSH in windows, it makes life much more easier. But yes, if somehow you’re not able to get the required Windows 10’s Fall Creators Update. you can always opt for PuTTY and use it.
Another a bit harder yet obvious way to get Linux feel wholly in your Windows system is to run a VM in it. Well, I won’t explore that here as you can get a lot resources in the internet abut VM.
I hope this article helped you know about this awesome hidden (at least for me 😂) feature of Windows. Enjoy, Cheers !!!
