Project development status?

[p-bo]

@olivergs Hello, is it only my impression or is project basically stalled? If yes, it is really unfortunate, because it seems, that no other configuration management tool for desktop is existing (Zorin Grid didn't materialized yet, Ubuntu ADsys seems to be tied to Windows AD, tiny GPO for Unix in Samba DC is not solving much in this case). Thanks for your eventual answer :-)

[olivergs]

Hi there @p-bo ,

Yes. Currently the project is stalled. The community in this project was not very large, and even with some contributions we had, the project was mainly developed by myself and lately @stanislavlevin did a lot of useful contributions.

Right now I'm working in other areas and the project is frozen, but if you, or others want to step in and continue with it's development I'm ok with support the volunteers and help with answering questions, code reviews ...

Cheers!

[thibaultmol]

I'm kinda suprised that Redhat isn't supporting this project. This combined with Silverblue could make a great ChromeOS alternative. Easy management, easy updates.

[p-bo]

Hello @thibaultmol,

foremost, I'm not associated with this project nor Red Hat (unfortunately ;-) ), but as because Jiri Eischmann (@Sesivany) - Engineering manager of the Desktop Applications team (be aware, that this app was developed by another team and decisions made also there) was so nice to answer this kind of question personally by mail to me before some time, I will try to share points from his answer here for others too:

• project is not dead, but as Red Hat essentially did first step towards its customers (expecting, this is gap for Linux desktop deployment in enterprises) by making whole first phase of development solely from Red Hat's initiative,
• then was customers turn to show interest and it was lower, than expected :-( Possible reasons for this:
  • large scale deployments are already managed by internal tools, developed in-house by every customer (based on Ansible, Salt Stack, etc.)
  • in this phase of development, Cockpit isn't integrated into Satellite server management solution and thus not so attractive for current Satellite customers
• Even Red Hat hasn't infinite engineering resources, thus must prioritize: thus lower demand => lower priority
• So for now there will be progress only if customers demand arose (then Red Hat will be able to rationale tasking their developers regarding next phase of this tool development) and/or more 3rd party/volunteers developers will step in

(end of interpreting from mentioned e-mail answer)

From my personal research regarding this topic (i.e. prefabricated desktop linux management system), found these two alternatives:

• Ubuntu adsys - GPO templates to add to Microsoft Active Directory and Ubuntu desktop client for them - offered as part of Ubuntu Pro
• (only announced, not released) Zorin Grid - but it seems, that there is also not enough developers to work on it - see https://forum.zorin.com/t/is-zorin-grid-just-an-old-pipe-dream/9472/3 and https://forum.zorin.com/t/zorin-grid/11219/2

Canonical after few years of lowering their priorities to Linux desktop, because it was not profitable (in contrast with their cloud systems business), seems to see renewed demand for desktop from enterprises due developers of AI technologies (it is native environment for them). It seems, that adsys is result of this shift. Now remains to see, how successful (= profitable) it will be for them.
And If even there ever will be Zorin Grid released and used by many, then there will be another proofs for Red Hat, that it is worth to return to active development of this tool to not fall behind competitors.

Hope it helps to clarify current situation regarding prefabricated solutions for centralized management of Linux desktop :-)

[p-bo]

Then there are two similar projects: from Samba (samba-gpupdate) and ALT Linux (possibly will be merged together) - https://github.com/altlinux/gpupdate/
Basically it is interpreter for existing policies for Windows desktop, applied in AD environment to map them to relevant places on Linux desktop (thus one set of policies is applied to both platforms then).

[AsciiWolf]

It looks like that Fleet Commander is no longer available in the Fedora (41) repositories.

[p-bo]

Perhaps at least some positive development regarding prefabricated centralized management of Linux desktops:

• Zorin grid should be still on track - see https://youtu.be/nO-fDAnRcNE?t=3485

Meanwhile:

• Ubuntu adsys sees not much development - see https://github.com/ubuntu/adsys/graphs/contributors
• AD gpo to Linux conversion tools:
  • gpupdate tools merger between Samba and Altlinux didn't happen due recent unfortunate development in world)
  • tooling around https://dmulder.github.io/group-policy-book/ development stalled in recent year-two
    (but developer is now focusing on client for modern centralized idm/management from MS - see https://mytechinsights.wordpress.com/2023/08/15/introducing-himmelblau-seamless-azure-ad-authentication-for-linux/ , sources https://github.com/himmelblau-idm/himmelblau )

[alexey-tikhonov]

It looks like that Fleet Commander is no longer available in the Fedora (41) repositories.

https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/fleet-commander/c/b5488433811cb31f4b73247cf8c80154c9f4146f

[AsciiWolf]

The fleet-commander-admin package sadly also seems to be dead: https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/fleet-commander-admin/c/903cc8677ed4f20bfcc0618cc60ac8f3d91459be