A lot of people connect to Linux machines from a Windows desktop computer. Despite the number of people that have to do this for one reason or another, there are hardly any SSH clients for Windows. Basically there's three - Bitvise , Dameware and PuTTY . I've almost always used PuTTY. There are problems with all of these clients, including PuTTY. One of the smaller issues with PuTTY that I've nonetheless always found annoying is that it is not quite as portable as it appears to be. Installing the client is usually as simple as downloading and running the EXE file, but vital information about saved sessions as well as seed data gets stored in the Windows registry, where it can be forgotten about. Or where someone else can grab it. That's not really the fault of the developer; if I was making PuTTY today I doubt I would do anything differently. Its a garbage collection thing. The problem is that PuTTY information can be valuable to attackers. Just about everyone who