PuTTy is quite a popular application among Linux users too. Similar to its windows counterpart, PuTTY in Linux is a graphical terminal program and it is not pre-installed in most Linux Systems.
Many Multinational enterprises use PuTTY in their IT projects to host a development environment on a remote Linux system as a client while having Windows Local system. Linux by default has a terminal which can perform in the same way. Yet, PuTTY is preferred as the SSH tool by many Linux users due to the following features:
- People who are primarily used to Windows find it somewhat difficult to operate on Linux. PuTTY has an easy interface like windows.
- It has always been difficult to edit sessions once saved. But now with PuTTY, you can save various sessions and then load them all together. It is one of the biggest pros of PuTTY.
- PuTTY has an additional feature to connect to:
- Raw sockets
- Serial ports
A] Install PuTTY on Linux (Ubuntu)
- PuTTY is easy to download and Install on Linux systems with the help of a terminal. Let’s take the example of an Ubuntu-based PC.
- Ensure you have the universe repository as a prerequisite of Ubuntu and that it is enabled.
- Terminal: sudo add-apt-repository universe
- Mostly, PuTTY is already in the universe repository itself.
- Before initiating an installation, update the Ubuntu repos and packages
- Terminal: sudo apt-get update
- install application tools to proceed PuTTY set-up.
- Terminal: sudo apt-get install PuTTY
- You can see a Y/N? enter Y to confirm PuTTY installation.
- PuTTY tools will now unpack in order to proceed
- To ensure the installation was successful, run a command:
- Terminal: sudo dpkg -l PuTTY
- This command will display the version and architecture information about PuTTY.
B] Install PuTTY (other Linux distributions)
- In Linux systems that are Debian-based, use apt-get or aptitude to install the server application PuTTY.
- Terminal: sudo apt-get install PuTTY
- PuTTY is simpler to install on an Arch-based Linux system. The command for installing is:
Terminal: sudo pacman -S PuTTY
- For the Linux systems that run on Fedora or Red Hat:
Terminal: sudo dnf install PuTTY
C] Working on PuTTY on Linux
Working with PuTTY is just as easy as installing it.
1. In the shell Prompt, just enter “PuTTY” to launch the PuTTY SSH client application.
2. In ‘Hostname’, enter the hostname or IP address of the device you want to connect.
3. Select the connection type of your choice among SSH, Raw, Rlogin, etc.
4. Click ‘yes’ when asked by the dialogue box. This is for security.
5. The connection is established with the remote system.
6. Add credentials (username and password) to authorize and continue.
7. The application can also be launched through the computer box in Linux machines.
8. Linux and Windows versions of the application are quite similar and indistinguishable.
D] SSH Key Management on PuTTY (Linux)
PuTTY supports Public key authentication which is used in interactive and automated connections. It provides strength to the cryptographic architecture. This way is more effective than setting up long passwords. The PuTTYgen tool is used to generate a private key for authentication.
- To enable Public key authentication,
- PuTTYgen: puttygen -t rsa -b 2048 -o thekey.ppk
- Get the public key by:
- PuTTYgen: puttygen -L thekey.ppk