- cross-posted to:
- opensource@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- opensource@programming.dev
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How about a client that isn’t bloated and constantly being updated.
what do people think of Netbird?
When I was going for a selfhosted mesh tunnel solution this year, I originally steered toward Netbird given that Tailscale (the client) is rather obtuse to connect with alternate control servers.
I don’t actively use Netbird, but rather did go with Headscale in the end. If you’re satisfied with and your requirements for Netbird don’t include anything that deviates from their setup scripts, I’d imagine your deployment would go fine. My requirements and my strong desire to have everything relevant in my selhost deployments be fully to mostly declarative, and be trackable via git had me finding out how incompatible Netbird is for me. I don’t think I have seen an app more averse to being deployed declaratively, which as it turns out is likely the reason their deployment scripts exist in the first place.
The there’s the (at the time at least) really confusing and contradictory documentation that describe two different generations of potential deployment of the software. Good documentation is half of what makes software deployments maintainable, and Netbird had (and might still have) outright misleading documentation that will have you looping in circles attempting to figure out reasonably standard functionality like using external oidc for accounts.
It’s nice to have alternatives but I don’t understand why we can’t have a fully FOSS implementation of overlay networking without needing a company trying to up-sell us to premium features. I don’t like to rely on companies to maintain a product that’s a critical part of my infrastructure.
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I’ve been using netbird for couple of months now.
The good:
- I was able to do everything using the free version (exit node, DNS)
- in theory you can self-host it (haven’t tried)
- it has an Android client app in f-droid
- stable, everything works really nice
The bad:
- it eats up a lot of battery on Android. There’s a bug open for it for months now. After playing around with some settings I got it to the point where the battery usage goes up on mobile data only. Once I’m back to WiFi it’s ok. I have deployed netmaker locally and testing it is on my to do list but as things are now I can go through the day without issues with netbird and I’m kind of hoping they will fix it before I’ll have the time to test netmaker
Netmaker was easy to setup locally but I don’t know if it can fully replace netbird.
I tried headscale and it wasn’t easy to set up. From what I read tailscale apps treat self-hosted solutions as an afterthought so it’s not as easy to set up. I would be worried they will drop it and force you to use their servers at some point. Netbird at least is marketed as a self-hosted solution.
Personally I’m a fan of Nebula
Obligatory super nice guide by apalrd
I’ve used nebula for a while now, and I’m working on building a little network management UI for myself because I’m so tired of manually creating new host configurations lol
Opens .gitignore
ignored/ tailscale/ .vscode/ .claude/ logs/Not all vibe coded projects are worth being skeptical of but an extremely ambitious, CRUCIAL component of the web stack should be vetted and questioned when there are signs of vibe coding…. Especially when it is being ghost-written by claude code.
My new favourite tool: https://slopscore.ava.pet/repo/https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fjuanfont%2Fheadscale
Headscale is a good fit for individuals wanting to manage a work from anywhere private network and monitor via a GUI. Also I suspect for businesses wanting to avoid Tailscale’s increased prices. Works fine with the regular tailscale client as well. It’s all doable in docker containers for security. Does Saml identity etc so you can do the auth via an identity provider. Probably more secure than Tailscale’s backend given their size and recent embrace of AI integration
