I think OP misspoke. He probably meant that they're not able to be unlocked by the consumers, usually.

Alternatively, Netbird has been a dream to use over the last half year or so. I think their server software has had some hiccups on new releases, but I stagger those updates anyways. All self hosted, similar concept to Tailscale, very good management UI baked into the self hosted product.

Netbird's great. I've been using Pangolin (https://pangolin.net/) lately for my homelab. It's very similar in functionality to Netbird, but I like the UX of it better.

Also a very good alternative. I went on a spree and tried out all of the self hostable alternatives and this was definitely a runner up to netbird. The self hosted tailscale is also good, just not as polished as these two projects are.

Switched from Pangolin to Netbird recently and enjoy Netbird more!

Which features do you specifically benefit from?

I switched from Tailscale to Netbird purely because of Tailscale's bizarre pricing tiers - I wanted just the SSH features, with multiple users, but the paid tier up from free didn't include the SSH features.

I think Tailscale would've fit my needs perfectly fine, but the management makes access control and grouping dead simple in netbird. It also generates a nice little map of your peers, their groups, and connected nodes etc. Quick visual on your topology.

What ssh features? You can have a hundred devices connected for free and they can all just ssh to each other directly

With more than 3 users?

For those who use Netbird or Pangolin, I'm trying to understand where it would come in handy over my Wireguard-Easy setup with my phone & laptops configured to connect to my Wireguard network externally.

Is this primarily for multi-user scenarios or complex setups?

Both support multi-user setups with SSO or built-in auth.

Beyond that, compared to a typical hub-and-spoke WireGuard setup, the main advantage is peer-to-peer connectivity. Clients connect directly to each other when possible, which lowers latency by bypassing a central relay.

AFAIK, they also have different origins:

Pangolin started as an internet-facing reverse proxy (Traefik) combined with a WireGuard server for backend nodes. It has gradually added VPN-like features, including client device access and an internal HTTPS proxy similar to Tailscale Serve.

NetBird is a self-hostable Tailscale alternative that started as a mesh VPN focused on P2P traffic. It recently added its own reverse proxy features (Traefik-based, coincidentally), also similar to Tailscale Serve.

Pangolin is centered on endpoint and ingress management, while NetBird focuses on mesh networking, though their feature sets are increasingly converging.

You're on the nose. My parent passed shortly after I went to University. It was tough and much easier to put all of her belongings in storage for four years, then it was dealing with it then and there while renting and in between jobs.

Agreed. My resume and slides are all templated with Typst, but I can't be bothered trying UML languages to make diagrams that'll probably be referenced once or twice a year, if ever.

Twitch shooters are niche in the first place, and it has an even more niche player base that isn't majority American. I think it's a hard sell when 90% of the diehard community built their skill on Quake Live, which comparatively takes far less resources than Champions or UE4. Bethesda then switched the F2P status of Champs and Live, which was not a popular move.

Well, this update doesn't mean much overall in the Quake scene, if you actually play it for the PvP. Quake Live has held it down since 2012-ish, and was always a free-to-play game.

Champions came out, most of the community from Quake Live stayed on live. Bethesda in all their wisdom made it cost $10, I assume to sway new gamers into downloading Champions (which they also made F2P shortly after release). So effectively, they swapped the F2P of both games, and the free one is the less preferred option in the scene.

> Quake Live has held it down since 2012-ish, and was always a free-to-play game.

They had subscriptions for a while.

Man, I hate being rude because I myself weighed 230lbs once upon a time, I get it. I just dealt with a 200lb+ man who spread his legs past the arm rests. Pissed me off the whole flight because I had to contort my body in my own seat so he wasn't spilling into me.

You didn’t have to, but possibly that was preferable to confrontation.

Probably similar to what I do with my papers and resumes, I write them myself then throw them through LLMs for suggestions and corrections, manually reviewing the output.

Any cheap camera with the IR filter removed from the lens. Some better than others.

This is probably the best alternative provider for individuals that I could find, unless you're orchestrating a fleet of servers or something. Personally I'll wait out my next billing cycle with hetzner, as I expect other hosts to follow shortly.