Why I think Netbird is better than Tailscale

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
1

So I have been using Tailscale and Netbird and I think the barrier to entry is much lower for Netbird. I find Tailscale to be very complicated and not intuitive. Compare that to Netbird which has a impressive web dashboard that is easy to use. I think Netbird is actually giving Tailscale a run for there money.

With that being said, there are a few downsides with Netbird

  • Netbird currently does not have a F-droid app

  • Netbird is younger which means that it has had less time to mature. Features like exit nodes are still new

  • There are no https certificates. That’s not something I would use but it is worth noting.

  • the Netbird client is pretty aggressive under Linux with setting routes and DNS

It would be nice if Netbird could be on F-droid. I tried to work on porting it but right now there is no Libre AOSP Android SDK so building Android apps in a libre manner is tricky.

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Another one to add, and I don’t know about the status of Netbird (since it’s not on F-droid), but according to the F-Droid ‘report’ the Tailscale app tracks and reports data without consent.
Now I don’t know if this is a case of it being a default setting that needs to be switched off (and is actually respected) or if this is something thatvis always on, or even if this is android specific or not, but it’s something I’ve just noticed.
Given the wording of the warning being that this is without user consent I don’t think it would be unreasonable to assume that it is not an option or something honoured though, or that the user is aware of exactly what data is collected.
Hoping someone will tell me I’m just being stupid about something here, but as a layman I’m going off a combination of assumption and infornation from 3rd parties that I believe to be trusted.

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