As a Java backend developer, you have to deal with Linux servers in your daily work, because production environments are almost always deployed on Linux. Previously, I would have chosen Xshell as the terminal for remote operations.

With the advent of paid versions, especially after Xshell has separated FTP files, Xftp also needs to be installed separately for uploading and downloading files, which is obviously not as integrated as before 😖.

It’s also a bit of a mystery to me that Xshell hasn’t been released for macOS.

However, I still want to say that Xshell is really very Nice. From my internship to now, I have been using it for almost 10 years under the Windows environment, and my feelings are still there.

I believe many friends are also asking, is there a, integrated FTP function, and cross-platform terminal tool? If it’s free and open source, even better!

The answer is Tabby!

Tabby has a 21.4K Star on GitHub, which shows how popular it is:

Github.com/eugeny/tabb…

Tabby: Brother, I thank you. Can I have another one?

Tabby is a highly customizable, cross-platform terminal tool that supports Windows, macOS, and Linux. It comes with SFTP, and can easily transfer files with Linux servers. It supports a variety of themes, has a cool interface, and is rich in plug-ins.

First, install Tabby

Go directly to tabby.sh and click the “Download” button to jump to the download page. The latest release is 1.0.164.

MacOS comes in two versions, one is arm64 and the other is x86-64.

So let me just generalize a little bit.

ARM is the intellectual property of a CPU architecture provided by ARM, a British company. The architecture is used in mainstream phones and tablets, but ARM does not make chips, but “takes a cut” from the hundreds of millions of processors in various embedded devices, smartphones, tablets, smart wearables and Internet of Things devices.

The Apple M1 is Apple’s first self-developed processor monolithic system based on the ARM architecture.

X86_X64 from Intel’s CPU model 8086 decades ago, including subsequent models 8088/80286/80386/80486/80586, 8086 and 8088 by using IBM at that time, produced the made of the IBM PC, personal computers are all the rage.

For details, please refer to the following:

www.cnblogs.com/zhaoqingqin…

As it turns out, Tabby has been working very hard on the update, even supporting the latest macOS chip M1. Oh, my Tabby!

Follow the instructions and install it step by step. When you’re done, open it up, and it’s still pretty cool.

SSH connection

SSH, also known as Secure Shell, is an encrypted network transmission protocol. It provides a Secure transmission environment for network services on an insecure network. Secure tunnels are created on the network for the connection between SSH clients and servers.

Before said to take you to play Linux server, we first installed the pagoda panel this artifact. The pagoda has its own terminal inside, but to be honest, the experience is mediocre.

Let’s use Tabby to set up an SSH connection with the server.

Click “Setting” → “Profiles & Connections” → “New Profile”.

Enter the IP address and password of the server, then click “Save”.

Then click “Run” button, you can enter the terminal page.

Now that you are ready to operate the server, run the top command to view information about the processes running on the server.

3. SFTP transfers files

Tabby integrates SFTP, so uploading and downloading files is very easy. Just click on the “SFTP” icon to open the file transfer window.

You can drag and drop files during upload. After the file is uploaded, a message is displayed indicating that the file is successfully transferred.

When downloading, click the file to download, and then the storage dialog box will pop up. Select the corresponding folder and modify the corresponding file name, and click “Save”.

4. Configure Tabby

Under the Settings panel there is a menu called Appearance, which allows you to make changes to the Tabby’s Appearance, such as font adjustments and custom styles.

While the Appearance menu allows you to make changes to Tabby’s color scheme, there are quite a few themes, but I thought the default was fine, as it was officially recommended.

The Plugins menu also has a number of plug-ins to extend.

  • Clickable – Links – Makes the path and URL in the terminal clickable
  • Docker – Connects to the Docker container
  • Title – Control – Allows the title of the terminal TAB to be modified by providing the prefix, suffix, and/or string to be removed
  • Quick-cmds – Quickly sends commands to one or all terminal tabs
  • Save-output – Records terminal output to a file

The focus here is on the “Sync Config” plugin, which allows you to sync your configuration to Github or Gitee plug-ins. Click “Get” to install, and you’ll be prompted to reboot.

After taking effect, click “Sync Config” menu, you can see the configuration item, the type can be GitHub, Gitee, GitLab.

Take Gitee as an example. Go to the personal Gitee home page, select “Private Token” from the menu on the left, and then click “Generate New token”.

After submission, the token will be generated, copied to Tabby’s Token input box, and then click ‘Upload Config’ to see that the configuration information has been successfully synchronized.

In the “Window” menu, you can set the current Window, such as changing the theme of the Window to Paper, changing the position of the TAB to the bottom, and so on.

Five, the summary

SSH connections and SFTP transfers are probably the two most common features of Linux servers, and Tabby’s support for these two features is friendly and lightweight enough. The key is that it works on both Windows and macOS, and once you sync your configuration to the cloud, it’s not too comfortable to switch between platforms.

Windows users are used to Xshell and macOS users are used to iTerm2, but neither tool can be cross-platform. Users of multiple platforms can try Tabby, which is great.

Tabby still has few learning materials, so I hope this article of my second brother can provide a little help and inspiration to those who need it.