I've been running a tinc mesh network for eons w/ my systems and it's never given me any trouble. I use git to check in the 'hosts/' folder and add/remove hosts as needed, pull down to all the nodes, and they can all connect.
I do wish the encryption + transport could be as performant as wireguard, but for my needs, I haven't been pushing it hard enough that it's a concern for me.
It also does not really have a decent mobile client.
But I have to admit, I have private fork of tinc-vpn specifically for Win32. AFAIR I did only minor changes to TAP driver initialization and how scripts are executed. They have they own thread now and additionaly there is script called tinc-pre to handle IP initialization before TAP interface is up. Becuase meh, Windows Network Interfaces work strange :)
I went with Dormant as 1.1 has been in development for years and no official stable release. Changes to 1.1 are the odd PR here and there, nothing really from the main author anymore.
Yeah things like improving the encryption I would expect even with a stable but active product like this. Especially given ChaCha20’s widespread adoption and optimisation these days. Likewise I would have liked to have seen decent tinc phone clients (ios, Android). But this is a failing of a lot of VPN clients.
Just look at the release interval on their news page.
Honestly I think the likes of WireGuard, Tailscale, etc took the steam out of the developer. It’s a shame because I do prefer to have a diverse range of VPNs rather than just OpenVPN, IPsec, WireGuard.
I'm not sure how to revitalize development if there is not a large interest from developers, and I don't want to turn this into something commercial like OpenVPN did.
Thanks for creating tinc, truly an awesome approach to meshed VPNs!
Note: I use tinc-vpn only in switch (L2) mode. For routing good old quagga (forked) does it job.