PuTTY

PuTTY is a communications tool for running interactive command-line sessions on other computers, usually via the SSH protocol. It can also communicate over a serial port, or speak various legacy Intercom protocols with appropriate add-ons. While it has a few quirks (like requiring a COM port designation to use the serial connection feature), PuTTY is easily one of the best free tools for managing remote servers, and it’s definitely worth a download.

? PuTTY

PuTTY is an open-source terminal emulator that emulates the look and feel of the old Windows Command Prompt. If you’ve ever used MS-DOS in its original version, this will feel quite familiar to you—and while it doesn’t have some of the features of something like Terminal (which we’ll review next), it does come with some added bonuses like support for macros, copy & paste, printing, and more. It’s also worth noting that PuTTY supports using SSH keys in place of passwords for authentication; this makes it ideal for connecting to servers where security is extremely important.

? What does PuTTY do?

PuTTY’s main function is as a terminal emulator—it allows you to send commands to servers via your keyboard and see their output

PuTTY is a communications tool for running interactive command-line sessions on other computers, usually via the SSH protocol. It can also communicate over a serial port, or speak various legacy Intergalactic Computer Network protocols such as telnet and rlogin.

You can download it from putty.org, including source code. Note that you’ll need to install it on your computer before you can run it, so you’ll have to download and unzip or untar it first.