Bitcoin Forum

Which client do you recommend?

And I don't understand something about Armory. They give you a passphrase that can restore your wallet. So can anyone just sit at home and attempt to "restore" other people's wallets? What am I missing?

A good comparison site:

Open-Source Bitcoin Clients for the Desktop
 - http://dre.tx0.org/compare.htm

It's a private key, not a passphrase. It's a tad too long to be used as a passphrase unless you have a very good memory. ;) But yes, you could sit at home and keep entering private keys until you get one that someone's already using (note that the use of private keys is fundamental to how Bitcoin works, and is not limited to Armory or any other specific software). What you're missing is that it would require more time and energy than the universe contains (http://everything2.com/title/Thermodynamics+limits+on+cryptanalysis) to do so.

This is excellent. Is there anything similar for mobile Bitcoin clients?

Yup!

 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mobile_Payment_Apps

I am also using Armory as my Bitcoin client and what i like about it most is the ability to make so called 'paper backups' (printing your wallet key on paper). One could ask whether it would be required to print countless times for each new adress you are generating. In fact, your Armory wallet is deterministic, that means all future adresses which are to be generated are predictable. So there are no annoying backups anymore, one single backup after creating the wallet and keeping it in a safe place, whether it be digital or physical, is sufficient.

http://multibit.org/

very nice client for Linux.

Thanks for these lists. Now I have some new clients to play with.