For example, the home directory in your WSL Ubuntu install is the same as your Windows home directory. WSL lets you install a full Linux distribution alongside your Windows installation, interoperates directly with your Windows hardware and filesystem. These new features ensure you can use your Windows client computers to manage your infrastructure regardless of platform or location.

In the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, Microsoft added the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and optional features to support both the OpenSSH client and server. More recently, Microsoft broadened its support of Linux and other open-source standards. Microsoft began to recognize the advantages scripting and automation brought to systems administration and introduced new systems administration models and frameworks like headless servers that did not run the Windows GUI and PowerShell that provided a robust systems administration programming toolkit. Both environments enabled administrators to run Unix-compiled programs on Windows, but support was limited. There were a few efforts that enabled Linux admins to work with their native systems and programs using Windows workstations with various emulators and interpreters, such as, Microsoft Services for Unix (SFU) and Cygwin. Microsoft traditionally depended on a rich graphical user interface for the administration of their Windows OS and shunned support of other operating systems like Linux. SSH offers critical authentication and encryption services for remote systems management, and this tooling will continue to play an important role in managing devices of all makes and models. Linux administrators have relied on SSH for decades for systems management and there is no sign that this will change. The SSH client is built into most (if not all) Linux distributions and is now also included in Microsoft Windows.

Use SSH for remote, interactive command-line access, file transfer, and to even encapsulate other network protocols between systems. The Secure Shell (SSH) protocol provides several very useful and important tools for the remote administration of your devices and hosts.

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