I was going through a row of photography books in an antique store when I got a call from Bucky Moore, our lead investor and a board member. “Let me know if you need anything from me. This is getting serious,” he said. He seemed concerned. It was Sunday, March 22nd, right after the shelter in place order went in effect here in California. The next day, COVID-19 was no longer just in the news, it was everywhere.
“Ev, do you have time later today to discuss the new web GUI for the command line terminal?” said the Slack message. It came from Alex, our user experience chief and the product in question is the SSH client. Part of me was worried. The command line environment had a sanctuary where I found peace and happiness away from the world of browser-based tools.
Let’s have a look at two popular ways of opening remote shells: the good ol’ ssh and its modern counterpart, kubectl exec. Below, I will only look at the “kubectl exec” subcommand and its friends. kubectl itself is a swiss-army knife for all things Kubernetes. Comparing all of it to ssh is like comparing systemd to BSD init. Also, I will use “SSH” to mean “OpenSSH”, which is the de-facto standard for SSH protocol implementation.
Did you know that in the United States, the Social Security Number was never intended to become the defacto method for physical identification? On its surface, this may come as a shock given how ubiquitously SSNs are used for this exact reason, but looking beneath the surface, we find that SSNs are terrible forms of identification. Ignoring the security concerns of a nine digit numeric code, an SSN is not for universal identification.
Just like how computers use trusted third parties and chains of trust to connect with one another, organizations use (admittedly much slower and more human powered) authoritative standards organizations (AICPA) and certified audit firms to create a trust system between organizations.
Designing software is tough. Whether you’re a designer, a product manager, or an engineer, we all play a major role in what the end user gets their hands on. Perhaps one of the most critical pieces on the journey to making great software is the relationship between designers and developers. When software is done right, it’s easy, intuitive, and a joy to use. This is no accident - it’s very intentional and it often takes countless iterations to get products to look and feel great.
We recently launched Teleport 4.3 and received an overwhelming response from newer members of the community. They have requested that we go back and explain from the start what Teleport is and why it is better than using the built-in SSH machinery that comes with every Linux or BSD distribution. Teleport is an open source Linux server that allows you to easily implement SSH best practices. We have covered SSH best practices using OpenSSH on our blog before.
The modern human likely has profiles on dozens of applications. Whether it’s social media applications, music/video streaming, or workspace resources, each of us must manage accounts that contain personal information. Over time, these siloed applications have become increasingly connected. Twitter allows news sites to directly tweet, Discord searches Facebook for suggested friends, and Jira creates user accounts using Github profiles.
We’re excited to announce the release of Teleport 4.3 - new UI, API driven, expanded audit capabilities, and still open source. This version is so significant, we nearly called it 5.0! In this post, we’ll cover the major new features and you’ll see why we called it ‘Teleport’.
This is a major Teleport release with a focus on new features, functionality, and bug fixes. It’s a substantial release and users can review 4.3 closed issues on Github for details of all items. We would love your feedback - please pick a time slot for a remote UX feedback session if you’re interested. Teleport 4.3 includes a completely redesigned Web UI.
