Hi Philip!

We develop one or more apps that we deploy on-prem. An app for us is a git repo with a docker compose file. On-prem is either a Linux server or a Linux vm that we have ssh access to (normally via Wireguard vpn).

For app updates, we use ansible to ssh into machines, run pre-deployment scripts, pull git repo and docker images, restart containers and run post-deployment scripts.

It could be better, but it works for us.

The biggest bottleneck we have now is communication with customers, scheduling of updates, letting them know of breaking changes or new features, that kind of stuff.

The apps are provided "fully managed". They dont know and don't care about the details I just described, but they do need assurances that everything is done "properly".

What we think would help us a lot is a way to easily let them know of new releases of any apps they have installed, let them read release notes, docs, and be able to either deploy on-demand or schedule a deployment at a certain time.

Although having fewer things for us to do is nice, what is crucial is to oversee deployments and make sure they are successful (and intervene if not).

Is distr for us?

Is it just meant for software or also IoT use cases, like https://github.com/balena-io/open-balena ?