[rollcat]

> I like Tailscale, but I'd much rather use real wireguard and eliminate a dependency on tailscale, but I can't find guides/tutorials/etc.

You could use Headscale, which is an open-source/self-hosted reimplementation of Tailscale control plane, so you can eat your cake and have it too.

Curious to know, why does distrust towards Tailscale come up so often around here? They seem extremely transparent about their strategy and incentives.

[drdaeman]

> Curious to know, why does distrust towards Tailscale come up so often around here?

I have a guess - I suspect it's because in the domain it addresses, attitudes are towards self-reliance, privacy and autonomy.

If someone uses Tailscale in some cloudy (aka all someone else's computers) setup, they probably don't bother. They already shift trust and rely on other people.

But Tailscale is infrequently used to manage own devices, which is why it clashes with self-reliance attitudes. If you run your own private hardware and networks, all or many of those in your own castle, it may bug you to introduce (or I'd rather say trust) a third party unless you're forced to. Not because it's not trustworthy, but because of the self-reliance attitude and desire to have full control over what you think of your own systems.

Sure, you're forced to trust your electricity provider (but you have an UPS) or network uplink (and even then you make security precaution), but trust in Tailscale is kind of optional (it's not irreplaceable), and not everyone feel like they want it.

Pretty much the same why a lot of people frown upon IoT stuff, even if it's from rare vendors who go extra mile to make things reliable - because of the hypothetical "but what if?" and feeling that you're losing the control here.

Just a guess, though. Others' mileage may vary.

[freedomben]

I think that's a pretty good guess.

In my personal case, It's a mix of self-reliance and a committment to open source that makes me want to have an alternative to tailscale (although I use Tailscale for company stuff and that was my call). On top of that, for personal stuff I just have very simple networking needs, and I don't want to add yet another service (a headscale instance) I have to maintain and keep running, and in the case of headscale it's particularly important because I might lose my network if it goes down! For that reason, a tailscale-only solution that is all client and no server is attractive.

Side note: the existence of headscale is the reason why I decided to pay Tailscale for company stuff. Had the clients not been open source, and there had not been a compatible FOSS server implementation, I would have spent the time/money slinging wireguard or using some other solution. I love Tailscale for opening the clients and allowing/even supporting headscale.