Tinc GUI Frontend?

[Lance Fredrickson]

On 3/16/2015 11:33 PM, Coyo Stormcaller wrote:
> But none come close to the freedom, flexibility and security of Tinc. 
Flexibility in particular I think is what would make having a catchall 
gui solution more difficult to achieve. Nothing comes quite as close to 
flexibility than editing the configuration files by hand. Gui's tend to 
get in the way whenever someone wants to try something you haven't 
anticipated ( as I've experienced both as a user, and a creator of a 
basic tinc gui ).

Freedom and security are certainly true as well. Being opened source, 
tinc gives you complete control over your network ( which adds more work 
on your part ). Those other solution ( so far as I can gather ) are not 
open source, so you trade your freedom for their simplicity.
As far as security goes, tinc's code can be reviewed and evaluated for 
vulnerabilities.  With those other solution,  you can't really verify 
how secure you really are, you just have to take their word for it.

> If only Tinc had a GUI or even a command line configuration tool to 
> generate and manage the Tinc configuration files so someone who wasn't 
> a network engineer who knew how to calculate subnets could use Tinc, 
> it would blast Hamachi and the others clear out of the water.
tinc1.1 does have a command line configuration binary (tinc), and is 
accompanied by the actual daemon (tincd).  It won't save you from having 
to read the manual though.

I can't speak for the tinc maintainers ( and I'm sure they'll pipe up 
for themselves anyway ), but I've heard other projects say that 
maintaining a gui would take away time from working on the project's 
core functionality.

> Please, someone, make this happen. I know NOTHING about writing GUI 
> interfaces or frontends for things like Tinc, and while I'd prefer 
> someone write it in Qt5 
Having said all that, I'm sure it's quite possible to create some 
awesome guis for tinc. It would take a motivated person to do it. 
Sometimes money helps motivate people if there's none to be found.

> anything is better than nothing. 
Well, since you asked, I have created my own little gui for tinc... for 
routers.  Don't know if it's what you're looking for but it's better 
than nothing I guess.
http://www.linksysinfo.org/index.php?threads/tinc-mesh-vpn.70257/

I had the idea for years before I finally ran with it (Took me a long 
time to get motivated).  It does actually make it quite easy to setup 
tunnels, between routers that is. Any other type of client (ie, windows, 
linux, mac) would have to be setup the conventional way.