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SSH, or secure shell, is the mainstay of remote access and administration in the Linux world, and the lack of any straightforward equivalent has always been an awkward feature of the Windows world. While there are various third-party options, Windows lacks both a native SSH client, for connecting to Linux machines, and it lacks an SSH server, to support inbound connections from Linux machines.
The PowerShell team announced that this is going to change: Microsoft is going to work with and contribute to OpenSSH, the de facto standard SSH implementation in the Unix world, to bring its SSH client and server to Windows.
Possible plot twist: Is this newfound support for the SSH protocol and the OpenSSH project actually a new "in" for the NSA to sneak a new backdoor into the protocol?
Original Submission
(Score: 3, Insightful) by WizardFusion on Thursday June 04 2015, @03:10PM
I'll stick with puTTY for my client side needs, thanks
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ikanreed on Thursday June 04 2015, @03:23PM
The main advantage here would be that power shell can run as a host or server for an ssh client.
It makes remote administration of windows machines less of a GUI based clusterfuck, and most large (windows based) IT departments have some sort of powershell script deployment system to act as a painfully kludgey replication of SSH.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Thursday June 04 2015, @03:27PM
It will be handy, but I'll still be waiting for the "extend and extinguish" steps, although the 'extinguish' is not really possible.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday June 04 2015, @04:04PM
Yeah, and you people have been saying that about mono since, what now? 2004?
Not every open foray by microsoft is intended to eliminate things. Especially since they're not the monopoly they once were.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by stormreaver on Thursday June 04 2015, @06:00PM
Yeah, and you people have been saying that about mono since, what now? 2004?
J++ was Microsoft's EEE attempt, and it failed.
Dot Net was Microsoft's reaction to J++ failing to EEE.
Mono was was/is a misguided 3rd party trap that has failed to serve Microsoft (so far).
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday June 04 2015, @06:07PM
Mono isn't in widespread corporate use, but it's in plenty of places, servicing it's niche well.
It's been 11 years, and mono has some real market share in places like Unity. You're paranoid.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 04 2015, @06:18PM
I agree, but it's not because you're paranoid that they're not out to get you...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2015, @10:01AM
Paranoid people think someone is out to get them specifically. People informed of history tend to recognize that certain things or organizations are prone to corruption and abuses of power. This is not the same as paranoia.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday June 05 2015, @01:59PM
Thanks, but it was a colloquial description of unjustified anxieties on the internet, not a clinical diagnosis of a recurring condition.
(Score: 1) by stormreaver on Monday June 08 2015, @11:40AM
It's been 11 years, and mono has some real market share in places like Unity. You're paranoid.
Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. You have just given me a very powerful reason to not use Ubuntu.
(Score: 3, Touché) by frojack on Thursday June 04 2015, @06:09PM
he main advantage here would be that power shell can run as a host or server for an ssh client.
This!
Having ssh access TO a windows machine isn't good for very much.
Having some sort of a valid/native shell for the ssh to connect to opens a lot of possibilities.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by TWX on Thursday June 04 2015, @08:37PM
I've been using a version of SSH that was ported to be able to run from a Microsoft command prompt window, but it's not a perfect port as it gets very angry about the lack of conventional UNIX paths. It doesn't store any key information properly, for example. I would like that fixed; the bulk of what I use a computer for uses SSH and Linux isn't as happy on tablet-convertible laptops as I wish it was.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS...
and everywhere the language went, it was a total loss.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Thursday June 04 2015, @07:40PM
I thought you could put Cygwin on a Windows box and use it remotely like a real computer? It's been a few years since I had to use Windows for real work, but I put Cygwin on and could do some things with it, like run my bash scripts. Have I misremembered, or can you run the ssh server under Cygwin?
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by jimshatt on Thursday June 04 2015, @08:01PM
(Score: 3, Informative) by tempest on Thursday June 04 2015, @04:12PM
I've been using putty for years, but it seems like the project is getting stale. More often these days I keep bumping into things putty can't do. ECDSA keys not supported, AES-GCM probably not going to happen, Chacha20 not going to happen. The other day I was messing with Kexalgorithms and Macs on the server side - putty doesn't support the "more secure" versions of those either. From the user interface perspective, aside from the pain in the ass way of importing profiles, I have no complaints. But the back end feature set is lagging far behind openssh.
Microsoft has been fair with encryption support so I could see this as a good thing, although I get this bad feeling that configuring the guts will be a huge pain in the ass like IIS.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 04 2015, @05:27PM
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday June 04 2015, @06:15PM
But you've been using putty to ssh FROM a windows machine TO something else (non-windows), Right?
I'm not sure that is the focus of this announcement.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by tempest on Thursday June 04 2015, @07:42PM
Yes, I'm just saying this in context of "I'll keep using putty". For me SSH support will be mostly a wait and see thing on the server side depending on how well the shell integration works. I've only had mediocre experiences with Powershell, but I think a big part of that has been the lack of something like ssh. No-GUI isn't an option on the windows servers I admin.