Red Hat's Cockpit May Improve Server GUI Administration

Cockpit is a new project out of Red Hat that is a new graphical interface for handling Linux server administration needs. The Cockpit UI looks nice, is still under heavy development but is landing lots of features, and might be a nice step forward for those not wishing to administer Linux servers from the CLI.

Cockpit is far from being the first GUI-based Linux server administration tool, but it looks nice so far and is already drawing interest while the project is still in its infancy. Christian Schaller (also of Red Hat) wrote on his GNOME blog, "Cockpit is a new server administration tool developed by Red Hat engineers which aims at providing a modern looking and userfriendly interface for your servers. There has been many such efforts over the years, but what I feel makes this one special is that it got graphical designers and interface designers involved, to ensure that the user experience is kept in focus instead of being taken hostage by underlaying APIs or systems. Too many such interfaces, be they web based or not tend to both feel and look clunky, for instance sometimes exposing features not because anyone realistically ever would want them, but because the underlying library happen to have a call for it. Cockpit should also hopefully put the final nail in the coffin for the so called ‘server desktop’."

Cockpit is designed to be easy to use, can be run via a web browser, and does support administering multiple servers at once. More details on this young Red Hat open-source project can be found at Cockpit-Project.org.