I don't trust Windows with my SSH keys. Since about 2 years, I am actively preparing my final migration to Linux. There's some Windows software left that I need to replace before this move is possible, but I am close.
I haven't used Putty since I stopped using Windows for anything serious (in the early 00s.) It was my favorite quick and dirty SSH and serial client before then though!
I've only used it through RDP on Wayland and it's been fine visually. Downloading it can be a challenge if you don't know where to look (Github, not Microsoft's App Store...)
The current holder of that domain is using it to host a single page that pushes anti-vax nonsense under the guise of fighting censorship... but also links to the actual PuTTY site. Very weird mix of maybe-well-meaning and nonsense.
The guy behind that page and bitvise appears to have gone totally crazy during the pandemic. On his blog, he said in 2021 "I forecast that 2/3 of those who accept Covid vaccines are going to die by January 1, 2025."
And in 2022, he wrote "Covid-19 is mostly snake venom added to drinking water in selected locations. There may also be a virus, but the main vehicle of hospitalizations is boatloads of powder, mixed in during 'water treatment.' Remdesivir, the main treatment for Covid, is injected snake venom. mRNA vaccines hijack your body to make more snake venom."
I don’t really want to give it credit by linking to it, but this seems to refer to putty[.]org which is using its search ranking to push things unrelated to PuTTY.
The regular page looks designed by the rules of the earliest version of HTML from 1993: no colors, no fonts, no graphics; it could be a port of a Gopher page. But the new landing page goes all the way to 1995, with fancy custom link colors, and colorful bitmap graphics!
Somehow, these new long TLDs just feel spammy and "fake" and I usually ignore them when they show up in search results. Unfortunately the .com, .net and .org are already taken.
They were originally a protection racket to shake down brands on the idea they’d have to register them all. Donuts even had the Domain protected marks list which let you pay to block registration but not have the domain yourself
Those actually feel spammy too; e.g. seeing "official" or "download" in a name has always triggered a suspicion, because normally there's no need to specially say your site is "official" or "download" besides to mislead.
Then again, I may be biased due to always remembering PuTTY's official page being someone's personal site hosted on a .org.uk server.
Certificate by Let's Encrypt, issued to "putty.software" no other info.
Sometimes I feel like we are training users to disregard safety mechanisms for phishing.
Using putty was never the pinnacle of professionalism and open source auditing anyway, it's just a binary you download on windows before you hear the gospel of linux and ssh.
I do see this type of versioning as an indictment of such a technology for production scenarios, it's all a house of cards if that's what you are building upon.
This seemed suspicious at first, but https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/ (the original official site) confirms it's real.
First thing I thought of was JiaTan75’s pushing of a new website for XZ.
The man himself also posted about it on his social media https://hachyderm.io/@simontatham/115025974777386803
Cool, but hachyderm.io also is not a trusted/recognizable domain for me. Trust issues all the way down!
So… what would be a trusted domain, for you, then?
https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
Exactly. Which nicely confirms all this by saying:
Latest news
2025-08-14 New website, putty.software
We have a new domain name for the PuTTY website!
...
It's definitionally the correct domain for Simon Tatham's social media. What are you expecting here?
How would the average person know that?
As much as I like fedi, it does make it hard to understand which user on which instance is the correct one.
Wow the way the new page text was written still had me guessing.
Maybe just call this the Future Home of Putty or something with a big link to the official page.
I suppose word will get around pretty fast but still.
Ever since Windows gained Terminal and OpenSSH, my usage of Putty has almost entirely ceased except for serial for embedded systems work.
Then I realised Putty ships with a CLI version which I now use in Terminal for accessing serial.
I don't trust Windows with my SSH keys. Since about 2 years, I am actively preparing my final migration to Linux. There's some Windows software left that I need to replace before this move is possible, but I am close.
Is such paranoia warranted? Millions of corporate laptops run Windows 11 just fine. I know M$ is evil and spying on you, but not to such degree.
I haven't used Putty since I stopped using Windows for anything serious (in the early 00s.) It was my favorite quick and dirty SSH and serial client before then though!
I always used mingw and similar projects. IMO, putty was always annoying (but very useful) software. The "ecosystem" seems better now though.
Indeed, that and “git bash” were always the weird outliers. I’m glad there’s now native options.
> Terminal
Have they fixed font rendering yet? cmd.exe looks better on my laptop
Have they fixed it spying on you? https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/terminal/issues/139
I've only used it through RDP on Wayland and it's been fine visually. Downloading it can be a challenge if you don't know where to look (Github, not Microsoft's App Store...)
The first time I ever saw it, the text already looked better than cmd.exe via conhost.
https://imgur.com/a/qA1fr71
Something wrong with my eyes? Doesn't cmd.exe look smoother in this screenshot?
My Terminal looks great! https://imgur.com/a/js6Yzxf
I find the Terminal more readable because the white seems brighter in your screenshots
Terminal looks far better.
I’ve never noticed any issues on any computer with it…
Simon Tatham's most important work is keeping its page:
https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/
Try Mines, you never have to guess.
Since windows started shipping open ssh I don’t have any use for putty.
> Unlike other landing pages, this one is run by the PuTTY team itself, and not by a third party with their own agenda.
No idea what this means.
Anyway Simon Tatham's games are so good I think he gets a pass on anything else he does.
Context: "The domain name putty.org is NOT run by the #PuTTY developers" (https://hachyderm.io/@simontatham/114846017785770922 discussed before at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44558328), but by a competitor who historically used the site at that domain to promote their own product.
It's much weirder now.
The current holder of that domain is using it to host a single page that pushes anti-vax nonsense under the guise of fighting censorship... but also links to the actual PuTTY site. Very weird mix of maybe-well-meaning and nonsense.
The guy behind that page and bitvise appears to have gone totally crazy during the pandemic. On his blog, he said in 2021 "I forecast that 2/3 of those who accept Covid vaccines are going to die by January 1, 2025."
And in 2022, he wrote "Covid-19 is mostly snake venom added to drinking water in selected locations. There may also be a virus, but the main vehicle of hospitalizations is boatloads of powder, mixed in during 'water treatment.' Remdesivir, the main treatment for Covid, is injected snake venom. mRNA vaccines hijack your body to make more snake venom."
That looks like an open and shut ICANN trademark case to me.
https://web.archive.org/web/20250728091154/https://www.putty...
They publish (right at the bottom of that page) the emails where a journalist asked them why they're squatting the PuTTY domain and somehow think they make the journalist look bad?! https://web.archive.org/web/20250728091156/https://www.putty...
The guy who runs putty.org is absolutely the South Park basement guy
There isn't a trademark for PuTTY.
Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection (https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/) is a fantastic set of logic games that's been ported to practically every platform imaginable.
I don’t really want to give it credit by linking to it, but this seems to refer to putty[.]org which is using its search ranking to push things unrelated to PuTTY.
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44558328 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44579265 for background.
I hope they only change the domain name, and keep the spartan websiste.
The regular page looks designed by the rules of the earliest version of HTML from 1993: no colors, no fonts, no graphics; it could be a port of a Gopher page. But the new landing page goes all the way to 1995, with fancy custom link colors, and colorful bitmap graphics!
Somehow, these new long TLDs just feel spammy and "fake" and I usually ignore them when they show up in search results. Unfortunately the .com, .net and .org are already taken.
They were originally a protection racket to shake down brands on the idea they’d have to register them all. Donuts even had the Domain protected marks list which let you pay to block registration but not have the domain yourself
Do you think the available putty.biz is more legitimate?
putty.gay is also available for only $3.
I agree, there's some good alternatives available too of about the same length (if you include name + TLD):
Those actually feel spammy too; e.g. seeing "official" or "download" in a name has always triggered a suspicion, because normally there's no need to specially say your site is "official" or "download" besides to mislead.
Then again, I may be biased due to always remembering PuTTY's official page being someone's personal site hosted on a .org.uk server.
There is actually a mirror at https://www.puttyssh.org/
I also noticed https://getputty.org is as well.
All of these are better than and I assume cheaper than that .software one.
Even puttytelnet.com/org/net is available.
Hell the puttytel.net is available
anything with "download" in the domain name looks scammy to me
Not a big deal, because they tend to be trusted eventually by the search engines and the language models, though I don't trust much the latter to tbh.
And thus NextDNS blocked it under NRDs blocking criteria :)
Certificate by Let's Encrypt, issued to "putty.software" no other info.
Sometimes I feel like we are training users to disregard safety mechanisms for phishing.
Using putty was never the pinnacle of professionalism and open source auditing anyway, it's just a binary you download on windows before you hear the gospel of linux and ssh.
> Using putty was never the pinnacle of professionalism and open source auditing anyway
Huh? The source is available on the original site and TTBOMK always has been, you're welcome to compile it yourself.
Related recent context/controversy that maybe fueled some of this:
putty.org is not run by the PuTTY developers
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44558328
Hijacking Trust? Bitvise Under Fire for Controlling Domain of FOSS Project PuTTY
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44579265
wow! I used PuTTY about 18 years ago.
Will putty ever reach 1.0?
https://0ver.org/
Nice page.
I do see this type of versioning as an indictment of such a technology for production scenarios, it's all a house of cards if that's what you are building upon.
It's a liability disclaimer versioning schema
At least it’s readable on a phone with text reflowing unlike the main site, although there is no text to read, so not much of a win…