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 -VIf it prints something like OpenSSH_9.2p1 [...], 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:
sudo apt install openssh-clientsudo dnf install openssh-clientssudo yum install openssh-clientssudo pacman -S opensshMac
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.
If you are looking for a very powerful terminal emulator, check out iTerm2.
Windows
There are 3 popular options, each detailed below. Note that only MobaXterm provides a built-in X11 client for running remote applications with a GUI, the other methods need a seperate X11 client.
OpenSSH (bundled with Windows 10 or newer)
The already installed PowerShell (or the classic Commandline cmd.exe) provides the terminal. They should be listed in the Start menu.
To check if OpenSSH is installed, run
ssh -Vwhich 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 the start button, select Terminal (Administrator)) and install it with
Add-WindowsCapability -Online -Name OpenSSH.Client~~~~0.0.1.0Or alternatively press the Windows key + I on the keyboard. Then in the list click on optional features. Select show optional features or edit them. Look for OpenSSH Client and install it.
Then confirm that it works with
ssh -VAdditional instructions can be found in Microsoft’s documentation.
Please see the SSH Troubleshooting section if you encounter problems.
GUI clients
MobaXterm and PuTTY are popular SSH clients and terminal emulators with graphical user interfaces (GUIs) primarily written for Microsoft Windows.
Note
We don’t officially support these clients, but we list them here because they are quite popular and users reported that they work well. Please use them at your own risk.
Both can be downloaded on their respective homepages.
If you do not have administrative rights on your local machine, you can download the MobaXterm Portable version or the putty.zip file, which are listed on the download pages.
Extract the zip file to a location under your User directory and you should be good to go.
For guides on how to configure and use each, see GUI clients for MS Windows.