Is there a task scheduler on GNOME? (programming.dev)

submitted 3 days ago by muhyb@programming.dev to c/linux@programming.dev

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Apparently gnome-schedule is quite old and unmaintained. I want to help a friend with this and it shouldn't be a commandline option, has to be GUI. Something like kcron, task scheduler on KDE.

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[-] A_norny_mousse@feddit.org 8 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Probably because systemd is the way to go these days.

Check if systemd-ui is available from your distro's repos. It isn't on debian stable, at least not under that name.

Cron might have more graphical frontends because it's older. You can still install it, and it will work and not interfere with systemd,

Ultimately though you'll never be able to reproduce the power of systemd (or cron) in a GUI. The only compromise I can think of is a GUI wrapper script around a code editor where the end user simply composes their services as desired (requiring systemd or cron knowledge), and the wrapper script then starts/enables the jobs/services/timers etc. Technically GUI.

There's also at but i never looked into it.

PS: I'm not arguing against your intentions here, just giving you the facts. tl;dr: look for graphical frontends for one of the 3 mentioned softwares.

PPS: it doesn't have to be a GNOME app either. Can be aQt, GTK, or any graphical toolkit app really. Though some people say you should be careful with KDE apps as they tend to pull in the whole of KDE which might or might not interfere with your existing DE.

[-] muhyb@programming.dev 1 points 2 days ago

Thanks for the reply. It seems systemd-ui does not exist in the repos. I also checked some GUI programs and found Zeit, though doesn't seem actively developed. However couldn't install that either because distro maintainers removed adding third-party repos (this is a government distro on a school PC). Currently thinking about guide them for setting cronjobs. It's on terminal but it's not that hard as they may think. If the distro had KDE, they would have kcron at least. It doesn't on the repo either anyway.

[-] A_norny_mousse@feddit.org 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I just looked at at; it seems it would be relatively simple to set it up in a way that it reads jobs from a file that your end user can edit. OTOH there will be the usual hurdles of e.g. launching another GUI app from a limited environment.

Again, you'd need to set that up for your end user with a yad or zenity script.

You'd also need to check if your system allows these things, e.g. the atd daemon must be running. Do you have root access to this machine/distro?

couldn’t install that either because distro maintainers removed adding third-party repos (this is a government distro on a school PC)

Hm. What distro is this (based on)?

[-] muhyb@programming.dev 1 points 2 days ago

The system has a root account but they don't allow you to use it. However there is an admin account with more privileges.

Though it seems editing crontab will work for them, since it will be a one time thing unless they reinstall the system.

What distro is this (based on)?

It's based on Debian, but has its own repos only.

this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2025

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