Installing SSH Clients

Instructions for installing the most popular SSH clients on various operating systems.

Linux

On Linux, your desktop environment almost always has a terminal, typically with a name that includes a word like “term”, “terminal”, “console”, or some alternate spelling of them (e.g. Konsole on KDE). The OpenSSH client is usually already installed. To check if it is, pull up a terminal and see what the following command returns:

ssh -V

If it prints something like OpenSSH_8.9p1 [...], it is already installed. Otherwise, use your package manager to install it; it is usually called openssh-client, openssh-clients, or openssh depending on your Linux distribution. The respective command to install it from the terminal is given for several popular distributions:

install ssh client:

sudo apt install openssh-client

sudo dnf install openssh-clients

sudo yum install openssh-clients

sudo pacman -S openssh

Mac

Mac OS X and newer already have a terminal and OpenSSH client installed, so nothing more has to be done. The builtin terminal program’s name is Terminal. If you need X11 forwarding in your terminal, you will additionally need to install and use XQuartz.

Windows

There are 3 popular options, each detailed below. Note that only MobaXterm provides X11 forwarding for running remote applications with a GUI.

OpenSSH (Windows 10 or newer)

The already installed PowerShell (or the classic cmd.exe) provides the terminal. They should be listed in the Start menu. To check if OpenSSH is installed, run

ssh --version

which will print the OpenSSH client’s version if it is present, and fail if it isn’t installed. If it is not installed, re-run PowerShell as an administrator (right click on it’s Start menu entry to see this option) and install it with

Add-WindowsCapability -Online -Name OpenSSH.Client~~~~0.0.1.0

Then confirm that it works with

ssh --version

Additional instructions can be found in Microsoft’s documentation.

Please see the SSH Troubleshooting section if you encounter problems.

MobaXterm

MobaXterm is a popular SSH client and terminal combination supporting tabs and X11 forwarding. Go to it’s website to download and install it.

PuTTY

PuTTY is another popular SSH client and terminal combination. Go to it’s website to download and install it.