Is there a WinSCP equivalent for Linux? [closed]

Question

I love WinSCP for Windows. What is the best equivalent software for Linux?

I tried to use sshfs to mount the remote file system on my local machine, but it is not as user friendly as simply launching a GUI, plus it seems to require root access on the client machine, which is not very convenient.

Of course command-line tools such as scp are possible, but I am looking for a simple GUI.

Burkholder

sshfs does not require root on any machine. – Baba

- sshfs requires a user who has permissions to whatever file/folder you need access to on the remote machine. - you can also script the sshfs connection string into a shell script and just execute it whenever you want, instead of retyping. - Ubuntu supports bookmarks for connections in Nautilus – Doane

Instead of closing this topic as off-topic why it was not moved to SuperUser? Was SuperUser available in 2008? Off-topic is simply wrong ... what's the use of WinSCP? Programming? Nah ... probably cooking! – Tabanid

I assume somebody has told you that "winscp" is the windows equivalent of scp, right? – Synecious

FAR Manager github.com/elfmz/far2l is a good option – Exploitation

The votes that this question keeps on getting – from the community – clearly show that the moderators were and are dead-wrong in closing it. Their view is not representative of the community at all. – Salvatoresalvay

I think this question would be more fitting in the super user stack exchange (superuser.com). That's probably why it was closed by a moderator. – Blackmon

There's a ton of questions like this with hundreds of upvotes which were unhelpfully closed by people for no good reason. I wish they'd either just 1) Ignore them (are these REALLY hurting anything? nope) or 2) Migrate the things to another subsite which is "appropriate" (in the mods/admins extremely subjective and probably minority opinion) – Loop

@Salvatoresalvay The eternal horror of StackOverflow moderation – Rampageous

Answer 1

If you're using GNOME, you can go to: Places → Connect to Server in Nautilus and choose SSH. If you have an SSH agent running and configured, no password will be asked! (This is the same as sftp://root@servername/directory in Nautilus)

In Konqueror, you can simply type: fish://servername.

Per Mike R: In Ubuntu 14.04 (with Unity) it’s under Files → Connect to Server in the menu or Network → Connect to Server in the sidebar.

Arrear

Thanks for simplicity. Didn't know Nautilus can do this. – Stagnant

@MiniQuark: maybe you should change it to accepted answer if it is closer to what you asked – Menedez

great answer Bash, thank you. FYI, fish://servername also works in Dolphin. – Tetrabasic

A side note: Gnome uses GVFS, which (at least here on Debian) by default mounts servers somewhere under ~/.gvfs. That may be extremely annoying, e.g. when you later try to traverse your ~ using find. Solution: add export GVFS_DISABLE_FUSE=1 to your .bashrc or .profile – Regulate

You can try PCManFM (apt-get install pcmanfm), just another File Manager like Nautilus and Thunar, but I find it better. In the main menu just click Go --> Connect to server... and you get a GUI for connections, plus you can bookmark them, and what I find best is that you can just right click on files and use "open with.." and use your favorite programs, just like your local files! – Begley

In Ubuntu 14.0.4 its under Files > Connect to Server in the Menu or Network > Connect to Server in the sidebar – Monocot

Example of what to input in Connect to server: ssh://user@servername, as of Ubuntu 16.04 (Nautilus 3.14.3). – Imbecilic

Sync folder is not avaylable in nautilus – Atrium

It's Other Locations instead of Places in Ubuntu 18.04 default file browser, otherwise it worked perfectly! – Anthroposophy

For who uses another port instead port 22 to SSH service just put the current port after host ip, separated by colon: fish://[email protected]:3333. – Loveliesbleeding

Also if you connect with this approach you can use for example Double Commander (same functionality as WinSCP for me) – Refund

This works using ssh://<ip address> in Ubuntu 20.04 as well. – Sade

Answer 2

FileZilla is available for Linux. If you are using Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install filezilla

Otherwise, you can download it from the FileZilla website.

Pastorship

filezilla can´t copy files over ssh (that's whats scp is for) – Corposant

Filezilla supports SFTP, which provides many additional management capabilities compared to the older SCP protocol. It is also widely supported on virtually every OS. Also, since the OP mentioned SSHFS in his question, it's clear his environment supports SFTP. One small note: the SCP protocol is faster than SFTP, but SFTP is better in almost every other respect. – Pastorship

Agreed Filezilla and STFP are great, but they don't suppress the need of SCP in many cases. So you didn't answer the question. In the client side you can't change the fact you only have SSH available. Not everybody is root of every server. – Nipa

Filezilla + SFTP offers processor-bottlenecked transfer speed. – Adman

fileZilla no SCP support, full stop. – Watt

Can I create desktop entry to access server files – Acuminate

Answer 3

I use FileZilla and it works fine with SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol). Follow these steps to install it and configure it:

1. Install FileZilla via terminal:

sudo apt-get install filezilla

2. Open the program and go to menu File → Site Manager... or simply type Ctrl + S

3. The following window should appear:

4. Enter the name of your host, select the port (usually 22 for ssh/scp/sftp) and choose SFTP - SSH File Transfer Protocol as the protocol and optionally set the Logon Type to Normal if authentication is needed, then enter your data.

Phosphorus

This is not really great: I'm running FileZilla 3.5.0 and it can't use my private key (.ssh/id_rsa) to log in to the server. Which is unfortunate, because I even don't know the password to this server (for security reasons), I only have a collection of authorized_keys. KDE's fish:// can do the trick. BTW, thanks for the keyboard shortcut - I was only using "quick connect" before. – Leonor

This did the trick for me! Needed secure access, and had filezilla already installed! – Banter

"Connect to Server" in nautilus is almost enough for me in development, but FileZilla is a great complement in some circumstance. – Fivepenny

What is "resp."? "respectively"? Or something else? – Tevis

@PeterMortensen this answer was written many years ago when my English was noticeably worse. I replaced "resp." with "then", since it seems to make the most sense. – Phosphorus

I was about to install FileZilla on Ubuntu server and was informed After this operation, 410 MB of additional disk space will be used. – Erasmo

Answer 4

A Xfce/Thunar solution is basically the same as GNOME/Nautilus:

Simply type sftp://yourhost/ in the address line in Thunar (you can get there by Ctrl + L).

(The authorization is identical to ssh/scp, i.e. with proper use of file ~/.ssh/config, keys and ssh-agent, you can achieve decent ease and security: server alias + no passwords asked.)

Regulate

This worked for me. But only after I cleared up a warning from an old entry in the known_hosts file. Prior to that Thunar just timed out when trying to log in without any details as to why. So make sure you can ssh in cleanly without warnings first. – Rather

If you use keys the in a terminal run ssh-add ~/Path/to/your/key then try connecting . – Neither

Answer 5

To run WinSCP under Linux (Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin)), follow these steps:

1. Run sudo apt-get install wine (run this one time only, to get 'wine' in your system, if you don’t have it)
2. Download the latest WinSCP portable package https://winscp.net/eng/download.php
3. Make a folder and put the content of the ZIP file in this folder
4. Open a terminal
5. Type wine WinSCP.exe

Done! WinSCP will run like in a Windows environment!

Paletot

@TomaszGandor, First I thought root is needed for installing dependencies which are necessary. But even after all dependencies are installed, root is needed to run WinSCP. – Deem

At the first glance it seems to be working just fine as a regular user. Maybe a new change? I'm running Linux Mint 19.2 Cinnamon; the terminal shows a handful of error at startup but WinSCP seems to be running fine. Tried connecting to a server and downloading a file to my home folder. – Outhouse

One step is missing, at least in my case. I had to install WinSCP first after downloading it to my Downloads folder by typing wine Z:/home/<user>/Downloads/WinSCP.exe. WinSCP was the only program that worked for me connecting to a Morty ssh server. – Rhinarium

Answer 6

1. gFTP
2. Konqueror's fish kio-slave (just write as file path: ssh://user@server/path

Pyxidium

konqueror has supported this for a long while - at least since 2003 as evidenced by this old mailing list post (lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2003-September/…) :) – Alcantar

that feature of Konqueror is super useful. I use it a lot. – Prairial

Answer 7

WinSCP works fine on Linux under Wine. I installed Wine and WinSCP and had no problems.

Chevet

No longer true as of 2022 with latest releases of Ubuntu/Wine: text is white-on-white and some stuff is invisible. – Idaliaidalina

Answer 8

I've used gFTP for that.

Cis

Answer 9

Use FireFTP, Krusader, and other similar applications.

Simony

Krusader is one the most equivalent to WinSCP. – Demitasse

Answer 10

One thing I find WinSCP does well that I cannot do easily with Ubuntu tools is tunneling to a secondary machine. This is done with one with one connection setting in WinSCP. While I can use the native file browsers in Ubuntu (11.11) to reach any machine, I cannot easily tunnel thru an intermediate machine to reach a third one. I suspect it is because I do not well understand how to set up tunneling. I am toying with gSTM, but there is little documentation, and I suspect it is for setting up local tunnels, not remote ones. In any case it is not as dead simple as WinSCP made it. This is no anwser, but perhaps it highlights a critical feature of WinSCP that suggestions for alternatives should address.

Now off to learn more about tunneling...

Consonantal

Answer 11

Nautilus can be used easily in this case.

For Fedora 16, go to menu File → Connect To Server, select the appropriate protocol, enter required details and simply connect. Just make sure that the SSH server is running on the other side. It works great.

This is valid on Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty Tahr) as well.

Vellicate

Also valid for ubuntu 12.04 – Ency

Answer 12

One big thing not mentioned is the fact that with WinSCP you can also use key file authentication which I am unable to do successfully with Ubuntu FTP clients. KFTPGrabber is the closest thing I can find that supports key file authentication... but it still doesn't work for me, where WinSCP does.

Ripleigh

Answer 13

Use Nautilus, the default file manager in GNOME. Here is how you may - Best SCP GUI on Linux.

Miter

Welcome to Stack Overflow! Whilst this may theoretically answer the question, it would be preferable to include the essential parts of the answer here, and provide the link for reference. – Franciscofranciska

Answer 14

If you're using Xfce (or LXDE) instead of GNOME, there's an equivalent tool: Gigolo.

I suppose, but not sure, it can be installed also on other desktop environments.

It supports FTP, SSH and WebDAV and it is quite intuitive to use: just click on Connect, choose the protocol, fill the parameters and go. You can save the connections for later use.

Thales

Answer 15

Just use GNOME. Just type in the address and away you go!

Gloat