Comment by guhcampos
7 days ago
Author apparently has never heard about Cockpit.
Everything they mention as "missing", or "novel" has been part of Cockpit for over a decade, from socket-based web server connection, backend-frontend separation for server apps and the whole idea of a server console with shell access itself.
To answer them: "Isn’t it weird that this doesn’t already exist?" - No, it's not, because it has existed for ages.
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
Sincerely, HN Guidelines Police :-)
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I get it, but if the author of the article uses a biased and loaded language, I think it's fair game to do the same in the comments.
I don't believe in that kind of response. Anything that one can say in rage or anger can be communicated in a calm and measured response.
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I don't think I've met many pairs of people I could ask "on a scale of 1 to 10, how biased/loaded do you think ${example} is" and get told the same exact number by both for the majority of the examples given.
Now apply that to the n people reading a given post or comment! If those commenters try to communicate on what they think is "fair game" for the given conversation, then two comments deep in and you might already be at a 7 when the author thought they were at a 3. In more extreme cases, two people could misunderstand each other through text and simply go from a 1 to a 7 in a single comment, spending the rest of the time shooting back loaded replies at each other instead of thinking about the topic together.
It's a very human reaction we all tend towards, even when we set out our intents to do the "always reply with..." mindset instead of a tit-for-tat one. That's why I always start with the ideal approach - I can count on myself to help foul it up :D.
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If I'm not mistaken cockpit is web UI and doesn't run native code, important differences.
Thanks for pointing this out. I'm not hating on Cockpit, but Outer Loop (with Outer Shell) has solved a lot more of the stack. Cockpit accepts the constraints of living in existing browsers, so it requires exposing a port to the internet or using some SSH port forwarding tool. Whereas I built a dedicated browser to push capabilities so that users can get a "Just point me to a server" flow.
This thread has been useful -- I think Cockpit will also work great in Outer Loop. And it will be easy to add it as an app in Outer Shell.
> it requires exposing a port to the internet or using some SSH port forwarding tool
This sentence is bizarre to me. Your SSH-based solution also requires exposing a port to the internet and installing a special tool (on both server and client!). What's so special about SSH that using HTTPS is a problem but using SSH isn't?
The industry also tried the whole "use the web browser to run native binaries" thing with ActiveX (and the unity web player I guess). The idea was thrown out along with flash and java applets for what I presume were security and portability reasons.
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Cockpit has a "remote" host connection feature solving this exact pain-point - "Just point me to a server": You install the Cockpit web service on one host (along with its backend and extensions), and on other hosts you may have - install only the backend of the stack (4-7 packages available via deb backports & other dist repos). The web front host is then able to access any other machine via ssh (if keys and policies permit that) and display info or manage that host. All ports aside from the web front and ssh between your hosts remain as is. It is a decentralized design.
Alan Kay once strongly critiqued web browsers. He argued for a much simpler architecture.
Your experiment somehow reminds me of the better approach that he was hinting at. I.e. I think he would appreciate your experiment as well as the neuroscience in your background.
https://x.com/i/status/1957798084181901333
Your project is really cool.
And, when a project announcement upsets this many people, it's a sign you're on the right path, or at least an interesting one.
; - )
It's a very, very thin web layer on top of native code:
https://cockpit-project.org/guide/latest/features.html
To the author's defense: Cockpit is Linux only, and they seem to intend on making this also available on Windows and Mac.
Still, I don't see the appeal they seem to do, especially since it relies so much on SSH. The biggest use case I can think for something like this in the real world is something like first-time setup or MDM, and on both situations setting up SSH to begin with has the same level of friction they're trying to remove.
Windows has quite a lot of remote admin tools that work pretty transparently over the network though.
The issue is that they're historically never turned on or heavily restricted.
Where the user is involved though RDP is a world class remote desktop never exceeded by Linux anywhere.
If someone wants to impress me, point Claude at Wayland and get it so I can seamlessly open remote RDP from somewhere else, lock the local user session and resume it on the remote desktop, then walk back to the original terminal and continue working in that same user session. This worked perfectly over 20 years ago.
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I never heard of cockpit either
what is it?
https://cockpit-project.org/