Hacker News Reader

Comment by arghwhat | Hacker News Reader

> Lol! Are you ready to deploy an ssh-capable terminal emulator at all times?

What terminal emulator isn't ssh-capable? Where would you not be able to open a terminal emulator? I am so confused.

> What's wrong with making simple tasks simple?

The limited tasks exposed by cockpit are also simple (or depending on the individual, simpler) in a terminal, but if you want a point-and-click UI for just a few things, go ahead.

That cockpit is very limited and seemingly has no future does not mean you can't like what it does now. Just might be worth considering if there are better-supported alternatives.

View on HN

> Where would you not be able to open a terminal emulator? I am so confused.

A mobile device. I don't use terminal emulators without access to some non-touch keyboard so I want a simple interface on my mobile device.

> That cockpit is very limited and seemingly has no future does not mean you can't like what it does now. Just might be worth considering if there are better-supported alternatives.

Sure then compare cockpit with other webmin-esque tools, not a terminal emulator. These are different interfaces, much like I don't compare a voice interface with a mouse-oriented one.

Terminal emulators, which can run SSH clients, are absolutely possible on a mobile device. https://termux.dev/en/

I know. Android is a capable platform. I'm just not going to use it on a mobile device without a keyboard, sorry.

There are countless terminal emulators for iOS that support ssh. Termius, prompt, and blink off the top of my head.

And using any of them is more of a hassle than just using cockpit instead.

Possible and usable aren't the same thing. You can run it on an android watch as well, but would you?

I use Termux to do SSH once in a a while. It makes me want to install a web UI to be honest. Most of the time I'm fumbling my long sudo password to restart some systemd service that crashed or manually running a maintenance script, that stuff is a massive pain on touch screens.

> A mobile device. I don't use terminal emulators without access to some non-touch keyboard so I want a simple interface on my mobile device.

Whether you want to use a terminal emulator on your phone doesn't change whether it's available.

I wouldn't want to use a clumsy web app with dangerous buttons that put me a single mis-touch on a poorly thought out touch target away from messing up/rebooting/powering down a server from my phone either, but that doesn't change that cockpit is available.

> Sure then compare cockpit with other webmin-esque tools, not a terminal emulator.

You compare it to the options available, which includes both terminals and webmin equivalents.

I don't know if there's much of a space left for cockpit or webmin equivalents though. There's hypervisors with dedicated UIs like Proxmox and oVirt, but that's not the same.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com