Is it possible to use PuTTY as the UI for the Windows shell?

PuTTY is much better than cmd.exe. Can I use PuTTY to execute Windows commands?

Jader Dias

Posted 2011-04-13T12:19:36.070

Reputation: 13 660

If you want an alternative command line interpreter, look at TCCLE http://jpsoft.com/tccle_cmd_replacement.html - If you want something better than the gui that cmd.exe offers, look at Console 2 http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/ - I have used this combonation for a long time.

– MaQleod – 2011-04-13T14:07:02.437

1FYI: PuTTY is only a terminal. It doesn't execute commands, only forwards them to a (remotely running) shell. cmd.exe is a shell. It doesn't have a GUI and doesn't handle copy-pasting; that's the job of a terminal (usually the Win32 Console). If you use PuTTYcyg in place of Win32 Console windows, you'll get your copy/paste behavior, but you would still be running commands in cmd.exe. – user1686 – 2011-04-14T05:15:43.120

@grawit I downloaded PuTTYcyg, but it was using the cygwin interpreter. I executed the cmd.exe interpreter inside it but it lost its auto-completion feature. – Jader Dias – 2011-04-14T12:29:06.757

Answers

The only way you could achieve this is to install an SSH or Telnet server into Windows. Windows comes with a Telnet server in the Add/Remove Windows Components.

Then you can use PuTTY to connect to the local computer and log in.

However, you will still be running cmd.exe within PuTTY, so you won't really gain anything by this - in fact it will probably be worse.

If you want the full Bash experience you should look at installing Cygwin to give you a more Linux-like interface.

Majenko

Posted 2011-04-13T12:19:36.070

Reputation: 29 007

1What I don't like in cmd.exe is how to copy and paste there. Putty would make it easier. – Jader Dias – 2011-04-13T12:36:26.830

@Jader: Use CMD within Console2 then. You can define any keyboard shortcuts for Copy and Paste. I use CTRL+C and CTRL+V. http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/ I hide the toolbar.

– paradroid – 2011-04-13T13:28:01.863

I use cygwin with puttycyg: http://code.google.com/p/puttycyg/

– glenn jackman – 2011-04-13T14:09:47.503

Also, you can use netcat:

nc -L -p 1234 -e cmd.exe

And then connect to localhost on port 1234 using PuTTY (RAW type connection). It is still not the best, but at least you don't have to install SSH or Telnet servers. (Also, Unix-like color codes seem to work for example:

grep --color=always ...

Using Windows grep seems to work properly.

kapace

Posted 2011-04-13T12:19:36.070

Reputation: 121

Alternatively to Cygwin, you can get more minimalistic bash environment with MSys-Base.

get mingw-get
install msys-base using mingw-get install msys-base

For terminal use MinTTY which is very similar to PuTTY.

mighq

Posted 2011-04-13T12:19:36.070

Reputation: 171