this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2024
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I'd prefer to get a VPN to avoid the risk of my internet getting shut down, but I'm not aware of what the options for Linux are. I figured this would be a good place to ask.

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[–] [email protected] 63 points 5 months ago (6 children)

The only VPNs which are not owned by marketing companies are Mullvad and Proton. The largest VPNs are owned by Kape Technologies, renamed because their prior company name distributed malware, whose top people are former Israeli military, so I wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw them. I would never use a free VPN except for Proton, and Proton's paid VPN has a lot more nodes and features.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Mozilla's VPN is just reselling Mullvad, so you can support Mozilla and use Mullvad at the same time if you like.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

That's good to know!

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I'm a Proton die hard but I hear their Linux VPN client is lacking. I use all of their products but not on Linux.

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[–] scoobford 40 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Proton and mullvad are the two best options I know of.

Pretty much any VPN provider is usable on Linux though, network manager can handle wireguard or openvpn configs just fine. Your biggest concern should be trustworthiness.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Mullvad has an open source client. It can also be set up usung OpenVPN too.

Bear in mind they don't have Port Forwarding anymore.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

They also have Shadowsocks proxies and SSH tunneling to help circumvent some blocking.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago (3 children)

I'm a Proton slave, all my eggs are in their basket so I'll go ahead and provide some free marketing for them. ProtonVPN is pretty good since it's ran by a good company that cares about you, getting Port Forwarding setup on Linux is a bit of a chore but I believe they're working on automating it, the Windows app does have it automated already by the way.

I do worry about the long-term practicality of ProtonVPN because of this manual process, since as far as I can tell there's no way to automatically hand your assigned port to the torrent client...

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago

im having very good results with proton/openvpn using gluetun

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (5 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

I like mullvad. I use their wireguard service.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Mullvad if you're a stickler for privacy.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Mullvad, it has ipv6 and works on linux even if you don't use NetworkManager. Protonvpn doesn't have ipv6 and only works with networkmanager

Also last I checked, mullvad wireguard works in the app, whereas proton requires special setup

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

Mullvad doesn't offer port forwarding anymore if that's important to you.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I'll vouch for airvpn. I've been using it for probably six years now with no issues. When using wireguard I can download Linux isos at 500mbps.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Not sure if limited by your connection but on PIA I'm pulling about 980 megabit/s

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago
  • Mullvad: Very privacy focused, ok priced, very robust. Sadly they removed port forwarding not too long ago.
  • AirVPN: Good speeds, many servers, cheap, port fowarding.
  • ProtonVPN: Works well, specially if you like the idea of getting their services together (mail, cloud, vpn)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Your OS doesn't matter when picking a VPN provider.

Others have mentioned plenty of good options.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

It does matter in terms of ease of use. Some have apps, some don't. A non-linux-native might have difficulties with the latter.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

Pick one that has a wireguard config generator, so you don't need to use any client software besides the normal linux wg client.

I'd also look for one that accepts anonymous payment methods. Even if you don't intend to go to the trouble to use that yourself, it's probably a good sign if it's available. Mullvad is pretty safe and served me well until they stopped doing port forwarding. Proton, windscribe, azire, and airvpn were the ones that seemed most recommended when I went to look for a new one a few months ago.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

I just use Mullvad with wireguard, not very hard to setup.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

Im using mullvad and happy with it on Ubuntu LTS

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Anything that's openvpn compatible will work but requires some setup

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

requires some setup

The story of Linux in a few words.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (5 children)

windows just does it for you, sometimes poorly. never used a mac so idk there

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

Mullvad is good and has a decent price

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

If you wanna torrent make sure it supports port forwarding.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

OS doesn't matter. And windows with crapware removed runs just as well. (OMG, there is so much crapware on the barebones install)

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

As you may read elsewhere, Mullvad and ProtonVPN are the go-to for many people. But what Linux distro are you running? both of them don't have an OFFICIAL client for Arch, you can install them from the AUR though but I read the from proton rep in reddit that they don't recommend these packages as they're handled by the community.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

I really like airvpn.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I'm on Proton. It's easy to set up on Ubuntu and Ubuntu like systems. I'm on Mint. Haven't tried it on other distros.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

It's easy to set up on Arch as well if you use wiregaurd.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Proton VPN is good and has a good free plan, but os doesn't matter when choosing a VPN

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

I use Proton VPN to bypass censorship. Use Remote Torrenting for torrent.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

AirVPN recommended here. Compatible with WireGuard and they have a Linux client, too.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

+1 for air VPN, using it as well.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

I use ProtonVPN with Ubuntu 23.10 and it works fine. I also use it with Windows and the only difference I've noticed between the two is that port forwarding is a lot more fiddly to setup in the Linux client, whereas it just works out-of-the-box with the Windows client. For that reason, if you're doing a lot of torrenting you may wish to look at alternatives, though as I understand ProtonVPN is one or the few remaining good VPNs with port forwarding.

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