Hello all!
I have been out of the piracy game since a little before mullvad lost port-forwarding; I know these things are ever changing, and to my understanding ivpn is a good bet at this moment in time.
I was wondering what everyone else has been using. As well as if anyone has tried the gui client for ivpn either built from source or the AUR build(I do use arch btw).
I am open to any vpn client that has a good reputation in the community, and build-able from a repository; A gui is preferred but not necessary, and absolutely NO account creation (Except for generic account numbers of course).
Thanks in advance for anyone who takes the time to answer.
The same 3 VPNs get recommended each time this question is asked:
- Mullvad
- Proton
- IVPN
Sorry to spam the instance with a FAQ. I may of been misinformed, I was under the impression it was difficult to seed easily with Mullvad now. Also I was curious if anyone had recommendations with good Linux clients, not just the service itself; It seems IVPN or Mullvad will be the best all around option for me, if I do go the VPN route.
Only Proton should be recommended for torrenting since it has port-forwarding. I don’t know why people love suggesting these even without port-forwarding.
So two that don’t offer port forwarding and one that only does on Windows? Wow what a great recommendation…
Mullvad. The others have horrible apps on Linux.
Mullvad doesn’t support port forwarding anymore. I use airvpn and you can just use the native WireGuard (or OpenVPN if you’r crazy) apps on different platforms if you want.
Wait why “if you’re crazy”? I know wireguard is faster but is there something I’m missing?
Tbf, you don’t really need any app. With Mullvad I just download configuration files and import them in KDE. It really is dead simple. Now enabling VPN at will is just two clicks with the possibility do make it automatic with three to four clicks.
you should use openvpn in difficult network configurations such as college dorm blocking everything except tcp 443 and tcp 80 or with old clients that don’t support wireguard
he is saying mullvad doesn’t support port forwarding anymore, which is true. As a long time mullvad customer, I’m now looking for alternatives
Is it? I couldn’t get it to auto connect at start. Which makes the all idea of having a VPN senseless IMHO.
It integrates like a normal VPN in GNOME, you get a button in the quick settings tray.
I’ve been a ProtonVPN user for years and they have been rock solid since day one. It’s also convenient for me as I have moved away from Google services and replaced them with Proton’s other applications.
Proton as a package is nice. If you immerse yourself into their ecosystem (email, drive, pass, vpn) you can get a lot of value from that $10/mo.
I had to unsubscribe from them after using them for some years because they just won’t bring feature parity to the Linux VPN client. I know they don’t have permanent, fixed port forwarding on the Windows client, but the fact that they still haven’t brought that feature to Linux is a big 🙄 for me.
The other thing is I’d be cautious about being dependent on any service where if you decide it isn’t bringing you as much value as you pay for, but you invested in certain extra features that are paid-only. In my case I had a secondary email handle (one that didn’t just have my full name in it, so I can sign up for stuff anonymously). Well, after coming to grips with the fact that I don’t want the VPN anymore, and that I don’t want to pay $4/mo just to send one email a week and receive a few that are only confirmations, that second address can no longer send/receive. I had to move every account into secondary free proton email before my term ended.
I’m not saying there’s anything nefarious about using a paid feature and then losing it. I am just saying be cautious about it and understand what you get yourself info when starting a subscription that you may depend on.
edit: this is advice directed generally, not specifically to the person I’m responding to who merely inspired me to comment
I think using proton service is more for privacy. Nothing is free anyway. If you use Google or anything else that’s free, you are paying them with your data, and proton they don’t make money from ads, nor do they have them and those servers won’t pay itself, but yea their ecosystem is pretty good, I mainly use email and VPN but there is a service called SimpleLogin that basically makes alias for your email, which you can send and receive from, and I believe proton own them now (dont have to pay for it), I basically use that with browser extension that generates random email each time, and we can deactivate the email so no need to bother with unsubscribing from promotional email and all.
No disagreement about the privacy of services and getting what you paid for. But I’d like to pay commensurate to the use of the service. I was ABOUT TO say Tutanota can get you secure email for $1/mo (which fits much better with how much I actually use email), but I double checked and apparently they had a recent price hike. That’s just how it goes, I suppose.
I will be cancelling my Proton Plus subscription due to the lack of feature parity on their Linux apps. For a privacy-respecting service provider, it’s a shame Linux is so low on their priorities and so far behind in development. If you’re on Linux, I would advise to steer clear until they actually focus on the quality of their services they have established instead of pushing out half-baked products.
I just decided to make the switch to protons services last week, so far it’s working well enough. I haven’t found a good way to automatically backup photos from my phone to my proton drive in an organized way though…
Proton Drive is beta at best… i works, just not how normie end user would expect. there work orders. But I am too lazy to set it up
Another mullvad recommendation usually don’t trust any provider if they can afford and want to do advertisement all over the place. Mullvad let’s you pay in coins if you want to be super ghost