I first learned about this in 2013, and it was easily installed on my Fedora 18 system via:
yum install mysql-workbenchOnce I had it installed, I run it (as an ordinary user) and use "New Server instance" to set up two servers I want to use it with.
One is on localhost, and I use the regular TCP port 3306 access for it.
The other is a remote server and I use "Standard TCP/IP over SSH" for it. I have ssh access via keys to this machine, so I tell it where to find my private key (/home/sam/.ssh/id_dsa) and that satisfies it.
It is unable to save passwords in what it calls a "keychain". It turns out this is because it expects gnome-keyring to be running (which it is not, given that I am running xfce). And of course there is no man page for gnome-keyring, which is consistent with the miserable lack of documentation for components of the gnome project.
Adventures in Computing / tom@mmto.org