Here’s a very brief overview of some of the Monero Wallets with a quick pro/con of each. Including the official wallet, Cake, MyMonero, and Feather. Now with some of them, assumptions are made about your use of them (light vs full wallets), for example MyMonero being a lighter wallet and the trade-offs involved with this convenience. Enjoy and thanks for your time: https://simplifiedprivacy.com/monero-wallets-which-is-right-for-you/
If an inveterate Monero addict (lol) created this kind of wallet list, they’d likely to note: “If you use p2pool (and you should!), you may need Feather or CUI too, because blah blah”
I mean, although many articles on https://simplifiedprivacy.com/ are nice and informative, the web site seems to be for-profit, selling privacy-related products and services; which is okay, but this conflict of interest (COI) is not necessarily transparent there:
To promote and sell their products, naturally they tend to slightly over-emphasize the danger of “non-privacy-oriented” tools and rather quick to say, “This is too difficult for normal users. Let us help you!” even for something trivial like using Linux or using command lines. For example, a neutral party might say, “Command lines are fun, and sometimes much more convenient (and you get a long battery life too). Let me explain some basics. If you type ls (or dir on Windows) blah blah…” but when you’re selling tech support, it’s kind of better for you if the customer doesn’t know that. As another example, Proton, a supposedly privacy-oriented webmail provider, also over-complicates things by only providing HTML-mail view, proudly saying “We block tracking images for you!” Honestly, just provide Plain Text mail view like others do, and such heuristic blocking is not necessary to begin with. I think there can be COIs like that between privacy-as-philosophy and privacy-as-business; a privacy-oriented but for-profit website/service should be seen with that in mind. This doesn’t mean that the said website is useless, though. Just a thought.
Nowhere in the Monero wallet article did it say that it’s hard. You are criticizing content by using OTHER different content of this, such as Proton. There is a big difference between being an email provider and helping someone setup their own email server with DNS. If you look at the services on the website, such as Linux support, you will find things that a beginner most definitely will want help.
Sorry, I forgot to write the most important thing. You can safely use Feather even if you’re already on Tor.
Feather doesn’t use its own Tor (in the config folder) when Tor is already running and listening to 9050, be it on Windows or on Linux. So “double routing through Tor” doesn’t occur. What happens is: 1) either an external Tor is already running and listening to 9050, which Feather uses; OR 2) an external Tor is not running or (running but) not listening to 9050 (as in Tor Browser), when Feather uses its own Tor binary. [On Tails, Tor is listening to localhost 9050.] So, I think the article is unnecessarily complicated, confusing (or “impressing”) an unsuspecting reader, with inaccurate knowledge. In fact, there is an official AppImage specifically prepared for Tails / Whonix, which (afaik) doesn’t come with its own Tor binary inside (because Feather doesn’t need its own Tor when running on Tails etc.).
I’m not criticizing the said web site. I think it’s good and informative. Generally speaking, though, one should not assume any info, including this comment of mine, as absolutely correct (especially if it’s coming from someone who wants to sell something, or who wants to get more traffic to their website for a business reason). So please don’t take this personally and do correct me if I’m wrong, thank you!
Good discussions and I’d love a follow up to this. I pointed out in a separate reply that I was unaware this would be how it worked. If I were ever to use Feather in future or recommend it to others, I’d like to be aware of the whens, ifs, hows and where’s it may be double routed or less private or secure.
Double routing through tor does not make you more or less secure, its only slowing down. Not relevant here btw, because as @Saki pointed out, Feather wallet does not do double routing through tor.
Thanks for chiming in with the info. Hopefully ShadowRebel or someone from the site reads the exchange, looks into it and corrects any contradictions.
@VolunTerry Sorry I didn’t reply sooner. I was waiting for the OP to answer first. What they wrote in that webpage might be relevant in some unusual situations, and if so, I’d like to learn about that.
@ShadowRebel Sorry again, my 1st comment here was unfocused and poorly-written, I’m afraid I upset you. I meant Coin Control, but didn’t explain it properly. IMO Important points of Feather include (1) Electrum-like GUI & (2) Coin Control. (1) is the definitive feature in the sense that I’d recommend Feather to someone new to XMR, if they’re familiar with Electrum. “Embedded Tor” is not that important because equally possible with Official GUI: please see https://monero.town/post/402343
If @ShadowRebel doesn’t reply, perhaps too busy, I’ll write about (1)(2) here so we can share various point of views, exchange opinions. Ideally, we can improve their web pages, correcting minor misunderstanding if any, so that that resource may become more useful for the community; and they can have more traffic to their business site too, which should be win-win. Obviously there are many things I don’t yet know and I’d like to learn more, corrected if I’m misunderstanding something. I hope the feeling is mutual.
@Saki, Great discussion here. I’m happy to have you adding to it. Hashing the details out is important and the collaborative nature of your most recent reply is exactly what I want to continue to see in the space and here on Lemmy.
I agree wholeheartedly about wanting all the resources to be as accurate and informative as possible and promoting the open exchange of ideas and opinions. I’m always still learning and love to have good resources to point others to as well.