A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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Can’t we ever have software that just keeps working? Password managers are like the new RSS readers.
Back to 1)
Well KeePass
The downside to Keepass is it is not self hosted, as in it's designed to run locally per device. Yes, you can put the database file on a network and have multiple clients from different operating systems access the database, but you will end up with collisions and database issues. Ask me how I know.
Running cross platform Keepass (and it's various forks) is absolutely doable, but it is not as seemless as BitWarden. I'm running self hosted VaultWarden and I'm hoping to run it for a long time as it's much easier than Keepass.
For what it's worth, I only ever had sync issues when sharing a database between devices with transient connectivity. Once I added an always-on instance of Syncthing into the mix, collisions were a thing of the past.
We've been using KeePass trouble-free for many years now, sharing a single database across more than 6 devices, with frequent use and modification.
Syncthing just announced they won't develop their Android app anymore. 🫤
Noooo! Ugh, that's so disheartening to hear but I can't fault imsodin for his reasons. I sincerely hope that someone steps up to the plate, even if only for the F-Droid releases.
For anyone else interested, the discussion is taking place here:
https://forum.syncthing.net/t/discontinuing-syncthing-android/23002/7
Bitwarden is a very convenient password manager for an average computer user. It's very straightforward and easy to use.
I can see some bias here of the people who say "o, just use KeePass and sync the database over some cloud provider". What if there are conflicts? How do they deal with them? I can figure it our but most people I know, won't.
Even the password manager concept is a complicated concept to grasp for many people (that I know). And I can recommend them Bitwarden because it's relatively easy, but KeePass with sync? Maybe, if I commit to actively help them with it.
P.S. I've convinced several people to try out Linux, and they are willing to learn it, but even if they just need to use a browser, they struggle sometimes. I can't imagine them syncing the KeePass database.
This plus the syncthing announcement about the Android client ending support is a bad day indeed. I was just thinking about self hosting instead of KeePass + SyncThing now it's back to the drawing board once it stops working 😵💫
BitWarden already has lots of clients. There's also VaultWarden for the server if you want.
This is being blown a bit out of proportion though. All they are saying is the official SDK may have some non-free components going forward. So what? It's a private company, they can do what they want. Or the community can just fork it and move forward with a free one if they want, but it's just not going to be in the official BitWarden clients. Hardly news or a big deal.
I can only speak for myself, but I would never trust opaque, proprietary software to manage my credentials, especially in a networked environment. For me, that's a total showstopper.
I've never had need to use Bitwarden or Vaultwarden as I've always been happy with KeePass, but this news would definitely have me choosing an alternative.
I always found it weird for people to recommend BitWarden ... it just FELT like a company that'll go completely off track sooner or later. And it did. Oh wonder. KeePass ftw!
completely off track
Let's see how things evolve before declaring things like that.