PuTTY is a SSH/Telnet client for windows. I’ve been using it on a daily basis for many years now as it’s stable, simple, and does everything I need.

A few months ago I decided to hop into a few IRC channels I used to frequent many years back to catch up with old friends. Instead of running a windows client (mIRC) I went with my old standby, irssi, a console-based linux client with Perl scripting. I’ve used it in the past and I love it.

Anyway, a lot of links are posted on IRC and the disadvantage to a text-based client is that I have to highlight to copy the link, then paste it into a browser. Being the typical sysadmin that I am, I’m a lazy bastard and copying/pasting is just to much work.

So, what does a lazy git like me do? I have a choice. A: just ignore links (My link OCD would not allow this). B: move to a windows-based IRC client (ugh) or C: continue cutting & pasting (:effort:).

Google comes through with the answer! http://blog.ryara.net/2011/07/14/putty-0-61-with-clickable-links/

This kind Swedish gentleman pulled the URL code out of PuTTY Tray (http://haanstra.eu/putty/) which hasn’t been actively developed in about 4 years, ported it to C from C++, and put it in a patch. He also provides a download of the PuTTY executable with the patch included on his page “If you trust him”.

I glanced at the code and everything seems to be in order, there doesn’t seem to be any malicious calls to anything where some dude is going to steal your SSH keys. However, I am not a programmer so don’t take my word for it, look at it yourself 🙂