PuTTY - Working on a Remote Linux System from your Local Windows Machine

While most software development, web page design, etc. nowadays is done using graphical user interfaces, experienced UNIX/Linux people appreciate the simplicity and efficiency of the powerful text-based tools available on those platforms. If you are familiar for example with one of the powerful text editors, such as Emacs or VI, it is very easy to work remotely (over the Internet or intranet) on other computers using Telnet or SSH connections.

PuTTY is a free telnet/SSH client program that brings this functionality to machines running Windows. It has an easy-to-use graphical user interface for setting up and storing connections, and setting display options, etc. The main window contains the session (shell) that runs on the remote computer, where you can type in commands that are sent directly to the remote computer, and anything the remote machine outputs (to stdout) is displayed in the window. Make sure you are using the latest version, as security problems have been detected in previous versions.

PuTTY is also useful for setting up a remote X session, so that you can run graphical applications as well. In that case you need an X client on your local workstation in addition to PuTTY. The X client, such as Hummingbird Exceed or Cygwin, would than display of the graphical applications running on the remove server, and PuTTY would provide the secure connection. For this to work, the DISPLAY variable on the server needs to be set to the name (or IP address) of your local machine.

For more information on PuTTY see the PuTTY home page.