Several posts back I commented on running RHEL 8, and one of the really nice features of RHEL 8, Cockpit. Cockpit is a web-based set of dashboards for managing an instance of Red Hat/CentOS linux. It’s provided and maintained by the Cockpit Project.

I installed an instance on a CentOS 7.6.1810 VM I’ve got running on my MBP under VirtualBox. I’ve had this instance for some time now, having exported it out as an appliance (primarily as a backup) and imported it again a number of times. It now has PowerShell 7 Preview installed as well as Visual Studio Code. And now it has Cockpit. Installation and enablement are on the Cockpit Project website, and it’s extremely easy to get going. What follows are a few extra screenshots showing just a small aspect of Cockpit’s capabilities on CentOS 7.

There’s not much more to say except if you’ve ever had to remotely manage a Windows Server instance with RDP, then remotely managing a Linux instance (besides logging in via ssh) is like paradise compared to RDP. The Cockpit dashboards are more than just adequate, and for this instances where you really need a shell/command line, the web interface will provide that as well. The only actions you can’t do are starting a GUI application. Otherwise it’s just really nice to open multiple web browser tabs for multiple Linux VMs.

If you haven’t looked into Cockpit, then you should. I believe it’ll be worth your time and effort.