Future of Nexterm

[gnmyt]

Hi, I want to use this place as a way of gathering feedback about how Nexterm develops in the future.

I started Nexterm because I was looking for a free, modern, and web-based solution to connect to my servers.

Everything started out with a simple servers and settings icon in the sidebar. I then started implementing features from my old software, PowerTools, too, which I thought would make sense here too since you could install apps on your server without needing to enter your password again.

The last months, however, I started to reflect on what actually counts and never found myself using the App Store since most of my apps are managed within Komodo. Right now, there are no auto updates, a limited amount of apps that come pre-installed and there is no real ability to manage them.
Sure, I can add auto-updates and cache the install status of the apps on servers. However, I started to think that this may be out of scope for Nexterm and cause too much overhead.

I also added scripts, which allow you to use the Nexterm UI to interact with your server using pre-defined actions. I personally think that this fits more into the "server management" scope of the software and would like scripts to have their own categories rather than being a single item in the app store list.

Furthermore, I was also thinking about taking a modular approach that lets developers integrate their own components and logic into the software by making the software extensible with event handlers and custom API components.

This way I could keep features like the App Store alive while keeping the base app clean and allowing third-party developers to hook into Nexterm to create modules for their own use cases using the existing server database that they already have.

I definitely see the benefits of making Nexterm more extensible this way, but I am not sure if this is worth the effort since any API changes might break these modules in future releases, and this system would create a huge overhead on the codebase.

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Let me know what you think below in the comments. Please do not use this thread to comment new features already mentioned in the issues tab. I've read them and will start implementing them soon.

I am aware that development of this project is rather slow, and I want to apologize for being slow in answering and pushing out updates right now. This is my first time managing a project of this scale, and while I love receiving all these feature requests, it can be a bit overwhelming at times. I still work a full-time job, so I focus on this project whenever I can in my spare time.

[tbreitha]

You are totally right.... Nexterm should focus on Servermanagement. There are more than enough Docker Management Tools on the market like dockge, komodo or portainer. I would like Nexterm clean and powerfull for managing server via HTTP SSH VNC RDP. Just my 5 cents.
Thank you your great job so far.....
cheers
Tom

[andreasmolnardev]

I mainly use Nexterm for remote access to my servers. So far, I haven’t used the App Store or server monitoring features. I could imagine the App Store being more useful for beginners; so if you plan to keep it alive and even expand its functionality, you might consider splitting it off into its own project.

Nexterm is a great piece of software and has saved me from having to reconfigure apps like Termius. I don’t think it needs many additional features. I didn’t realize scripts were available (probably my fault for not reading the release notes), but I use n8n for that.

Thanks a lot for making my homelab more accessible to me!
Andrew

[M9RPH]

I would appreciate if you could improve image quality on RDP/VNC Sessions. Some sort of image scaling? Don't get me wrong, i like your tool very much and use it on a daily base, but struggeling with the readability of text is really hard ...

[imaustinlittle]

I love the app. Have it in docker in unraid.

A request, it would be nice to be able to specify an icon outside of the ones provided; similar to how Homepage (gethomepage.dev) does it.

[taduo]

• The app is amazing.
• Never used App Store as I manage my apps / docker via other means.
• Liked the AI integration. It helps craft advance commands.

[gnmyt]

Thanks for all the feedback! I decided to create a dedicated project and remove the App Store from this one. Feel free to check out this discussion for more information or if you want to give some feedback! :)