I'm using an SSH tunnel to connect to my email server and since I keep my email application open all the time, it means I keep my ssh tunnel open all the time. But I'm sick of having to run my little ssh tunnel script in a console all the time...

Is there a simple GUI application that I can use that will just run in my system tray so its out of the way but I can easily access it to manage the connection, add/remove ports to forward, etc? And if you happen to know of an identicle solution for windows, please let me know as well.

Thx.

I've never bothered with a GUI for ssh with Linux. For Windows, "Putty" is a well known and respected (free) ssh client. http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/ You can get Putty for Linux as well, but you don't need it unless you're specifically after the GUI. I find the GUI more confusing than commandline ssh myself. But that's just my personal preference.

Yeah, normally I would use regular command line too, but the whole thing is I don't want to have to deal with a window being open all the time - I'd like to basically minimize it to the system tray but still be able to manage the connection in real time. For example, I could just use an the command line to connect without actually opening up a shell and the background the process, but then there's no indication of the status for example if it gets disconnected. And there are other advantages held by an application that manages an SSH connection, like it could automatically and continuously try to reconnect.

yeah you are just like me ,
there is a program which minimized programs to tray and it works so easily , the program is AllTray

Enjoy !