Nearly three years ago I posted about using Cockpit ( /2019/06/08/in-the-cockpit-with-lentos-7/  )from the Cockpit Project ( https://cockpit-project.org ). I set it up on a number of systems where I was working right before I retired, and then when I left work life behind I basically forgot all about it. Until today. I now have two “serious” (meaning installed on hardware) Linux systems I manage at home, one of them running Pi-Hole (the Raspberry Pi 4) and the other running Pop!_OS. So I decided to install Cockpit onto both systems via apt, since both are Debian/Ubuntu derived. While I was pleasantly surprised to find it in the Pop!_OS repos, I was shocked (shocked, I tell you!) to find in the Raspbian repos for the Raspberry Pi. I got it installed on both systems, and here’s what it’s like to use today’s Cockpit.

First, the login page for Pop!_OS.

I don’t know why it says Ubuntu on the front page, then lists the operating system as Pop!_OS 21.10. But if I were going to keep this in my repos I might want to change the major title at the top of the page.

Once logged in I’m presented with a very clean, minimalist overview of the OS.

What I found interesting the first time, and still do, is that a shell on the system is run within a web page. Here’s that shell page running htop.

I don’t know how they do it, but the developers of Cockpit are to be commended for this one feature alone. Everything you would expect a regular shell to do, this one does equally well.

The version installed on Raspbian and the Raspberry Pi 4 isn’t that much different. Some very minor differences, but otherwise identical except you know you’re running on Raspbian.

This is a great alternative to managing these machines besides opening up an ssh in another terminal. It’s absolutely fantastic when I’m sitting with my Lenovo Chromebook in my lap, with two tabs open and Cockpit running on each system in each tab. I am continuously pleasantly surprised and somewhat amazed at what contemporary Linux distributions can do.