Taking that Unix and Linux feeling tothe Windows desktop with MobaXterm

False Laurels

Article from ADMIN 09/2012

By Thomas Drilling

MobaXterm, a portable X server for Windows, bundles built-in Unix/Posix tools into a single portable EXE file, letting you use a Linux command line and tools on the Windows desktop.

An X server running on Windows is interesting to two user groups. For Linux administrators who occasionally use a Windows computer, it provides an easy way to manage the Windows computer with Linux commands. If necessary, support for remote login and the use of popular remote tools on Linux machines are also available. On the other hand, Windows users who are ready to make the switch to Linux can experiment with Linux commands, Linux syntax, and the Linux directory structure from their Windows computer. MobaXterm is designed as a portable one-click EXE, so it eliminates what would otherwise be a time-consuming installation.

Feature Scope

MobaXterm functionality goes far beyond providing a Linux terminal in Windows, in that the EXE file contains the essential Unix commands and a session manager that provides all the important remote network tools (e.g., SH, RDP, VNC, Telnet, Rlogin, FTP, SFTP, and XDMCP). X11 forwarding is supported by OpenSSH. The full MobaXterm package thus consists of the embedded X server, the tab-enabled terminal with embedded Unix commands (e.g., ls, cd, cat, sed, grep, awk, rsync, wget), and the session manager. A free version 4.4 is available for download [1] on the project site [2], and a professional version with advanced capabilities is available for EUR 49. A feature list [3] specifies the differences between the free and pro versions.

The terminal function supports anti-aliasing, fonts, and macros, and a plugin interface allows you to add features; however, these are mainly Unix and X11 tools that were ported from Cygwin. The project site [4]

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