Hello. As I understand it, ssh(1) has no option (e.g. environment variable, ssh_config(5) line, etc) to instruct it to prompt you for a username. If you do not give a username when running ssh, it will use the value of the $USER environment variable, and if you give a username when running ssh it will use that. I would like to submit a feature request for an option (e.g. -o PromptForUsername) that is not activated by default but would cause ssh(1) to prompt for a username before or after the connection has been established (whichever is most technically feasible), before authentication such as password/pubkey/etc begins. Similar to the behaviour of PuTTY, if you will. It could look like this: $ cat .ssh/config ... Host * ... PromptForUsername yes $ ssh host Username: xxxx ...
sorry, but we usually dont do upstream development. this sort of feature request would be filed here: https://bugzilla.mindrot.org/