For those who may wonder, it looks like this is GNU/Linux only, no support for BSD or any Linux distro that doesn't use systemd. That means no Alpine Linux and no OpenBSD/FreeBSD.
It _is_ dependent on dbus.
> Cockpit uses systemd and the DBus APIs it provides to configure and monitor core aspects of the system. Use of alternate system APIs are not currently implemented.
and
> Cockpit configures the system time and time zone via the timedated daemon. To perform similar tasks from the command line use the timedatectl command
That's a systemd specific daemon.
http://cockpit-project.org/guide/latest/feature-systemd.html
Edit: Also please note that I'm not disparaging Cockpit nor systemd, just pointing out that (according to their documentation linked above) it is tied to systemd which may be an issue for some.
It too, like Cockpit here (as shown at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16448768), talks directly to the idiosyncratic systemd process #1 API (rather than, say, using the "service" command to start services on demand).
* https://github.com/bus1/dbus-broker/blob/07e43501e418c8066c7...