Is this a similar but more generic approach to cosmic sync[1] or more like a company deploys to many employees?
1: https://ostechnix.com/system76-cosmic-sync-linux-desktop-set...
Show HN: Bor – Open-source policy management for Linux desktops
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Re: Show HN: Bor – Open-source policy management for Linux desktops
#22This is cool. I’m getting into this type of management for the first time after being in software development for a long time. What other open source or enterprise solutions is this potentially competing with? What made you write your own, as in, what you weren’t able to do or didn’t like about existing solutions?
I use Ansible or Pyinfra more recently to accomplish these sorts of tasks. Not quite the same concept, but I think it accomplishes the same goal for me.
Re: Show HN: Bor – Open-source policy management for Linux desktops
#23Is this a similar but more generic approach to cosmic sync[1] or more like a company deploys to many employees? 1: https://ostechnix.com/system76-cosmic-sync-linux-desktop-set...
Interesting project, I've never heard of it. Looks very similar as functionality, but Bor is a centralized management system. As you said, it's more like "company deploys to many employees". The target is not only companies. It would be useful in Schools, universities, community centers, etc.
Re: Show HN: Bor – Open-source policy management for Linux desktops
#24This looks really close to what I need. I manage a few laptops for a non-profit. For now, it is all done by hand, since I haven't found a good solution for Linux and I will kill myself before using Windows and Intune again. I would love to see configurations for Linux Mint's Cinnamon. Is there a way to execute custom scripts? How does the user mapping work exactly? Could I create a user in Authentik with a laptop-per…
Would ansible meet some or all of your needs?
That's what I thought as well, I manage a small (50-ish) fleet of Linux Desktops using Ansible. Not perfect, but good enough that it mostly gets the job done.
Re: Show HN: Bor – Open-source policy management for Linux desktops
#25Is this a similar but more generic approach to cosmic sync[1] or more like a company deploys to many employees? 1: https://ostechnix.com/system76-cosmic-sync-linux-desktop-set...
Interesting project, I've never heard of it. Looks very similar as functionality, but Bor is a centralized management system. As you said, it's more like "company deploys to many employees". The target is not only companies. It would be useful in Schools, universities, community centers, etc.
Great, then i have to try this. Hopefully it can be used via git to have a deployment for all my home linux desktop environments including my wife and parents.
Thanks for taking the time and for making this!
Re: Show HN: Bor – Open-source policy management for Linux desktops
#26Can this be used to enforce “screen time” for laptops given to children, hopefully in a more effective way than the equivalent systems on iOS and Android?
Gnome 50 seems to have added this functionality similar to macOS/iOS:
https://release.gnome.org/50/
So any modern distribution with Gnome as desktop should allow this (e.g. Fedora)
I found more details and screenshots on this blog: https://blogs.gnome.org/ignapk/
Re: Show HN: Bor – Open-source policy management for Linux desktops
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting project, I've never heard of it. Looks very similar as functionality, but Bor is a centralized management system. As you said, it's more like "company deploys to many employees". The target is not only companies. It would be useful in Schools, universities, community centers, etc.
Great, then i have to try this. Hopefully it can be used via git to have a deployment for all my home linux desktop environments including my wife and parents. Thanks for taking the time and for making this!
I'm currently working on a Git support and an unified format for import/export of the policies :)
Re: Show HN: Bor – Open-source policy management for Linux desktops
#28Have you considered bolting this frontend on something like Wazuh for fleet governance?
Re: Show HN: Bor – Open-source policy management for Linux desktops
#29How is configuration drift / policy enforcement handled if there's no polling interval? Like suppose a user changes a setting, does it revert back to the enforced setting, if so, when and how?
I asked OP if he could integrate this with something like wazuh for governance. That would be a useful combination.
Re: Show HN: Bor – Open-source policy management for Linux desktops
#30Nice work on the mTLS/gRPC push design — the inotify drift-catch on parent dirs is a clean answer to the "revert happens before the user notices" problem, and I like that the audit trail is server-side. Question on the policy model: how do you handle conflicting policies across sources — say a package postinstall rewrites a managed file while a newer policy is mid-sync from the server, or two policy types touch the s…
The default enrollment is based on temporary (5 min lifetime)tokens, generated from the UI. Domain-joined machines use Kerberos, but this is optional. Using the temporary tokens, the admin have to execute the agent with a command-line option for enrollment. About the files, most of the bor-managed files are not defaults, coming from the system packages. If a given file is overridden by a package, the Bor agent will i…
You replied to an obvious LLM bot.