From the team;
Hi everyone,
As you may know, we released our fully rewritten Proton VPN app for Linux in October 2023, and we’re now making sure it catches up with the rest of the Proton VPN apps in terms of the features it offers.
In November, we added Secure Core, and today, we’re adding the Advanced Kill Switch.
This feature prevents all outgoing and incoming connections outside the VPN interface, meaning that your device will not be able to access the internet unless you connect to one of our VPN servers. You can learn more about how to set it up here: https://protonvpn.com/support/permanent-kill-switch/
More on how to install the Proton VPN Linux app in our support article here: https://protonvpn.com/support/linux-vpn-setup/
We want to thank everyone who contributed during the alpha and beta phases by testing, giving feedback, and submitting suggestions for improvement. Your input is invaluable. And we’d like to keep getting it!
Please share your thoughts below so we can continue to make improvements based on your needs.
Stay safe,
The Proton VPN Team
I’m confused, I thought it already had this? I’ve been using it for months. What is new here?
Glad to hear that things are still happening to the Linux app anyway. Slowly but surely we’ll catch up to feature parity (split tunneling when?).
All internet connections into and out of your Linux device will now be blocked unless a VPN connection to a Proton VPN server is active.
If I understand correctly, before version 4.2.0 (that includes the Advanced setting), the kill switch wasn’t active until you opened the ProtonVPN program. So if you restarted you PC, it was connecting to the internet without going through the VPN tunnel, so your traffic was somewhat exposed.
Now, with the new permanent kill switch, there’s no internet access without running ProtonVPN.
Split tunneling the latest I can find is from 4 months ago:
Split Tunneling won’t be possible with the current backend (Network Manager) as that is just not technically feasible, but once we get the native backends that will definitely be possible. But the rest, will be there in due time.
Source is on reddit. (If interested: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonVPN/comments/174pv4a/the_new_proton_vpn_linux_app_is_officially_out_of/k4jxesn/)
Fair enough, although I still think the timeframe is some classic Proton soon™ copium. The community CLI app currently supports it.
That said, I might expect the official app to have higher standards for security. And, the community version cannot handle split tunneling and kill switch at once, you have to pick one or the other.
