I am only 2 days into my Linux adventure, so I’m still figuring things out. I can’t seem to find much info on which VPN’s work well with Pop _os…and how to install them. What is everyone using?
The first thing you’ll need to do is install these two packages. sudo apt install openvpn-systemd-resolved network-manager-openvpn-gnome. Now you’ll be able to use Network Manager to easily set up a config.
I agree with AlexP11223, I never use company clients. Get your .ovpn config file and import it into Network Manager using the “Import from file” option. That’s it, unless you want to do something more complicated. Some people recommend to make IPV6 link local only, but I’ll leave that to you to decide. Once installed, you can toggle the VPN connection in Settings> Network or from the top panel drop down menu. Alternately, you can run nm-connection-editor, and in the general tab you can choose to have the config start automatically with the particular network you’re using.
As far as services are concerned, I currently recommend ExpressVPN, ProtonVPN and AirVPN. However, I’ve just revisited Windscribe and it looks pretty good now. All of these VPN services have good encryption strengths and protocols. They have good logging policies, or lack thereof - No logging. Legal jurisdiction is important. All the above services have Linux configs that you can download and use as described above.
VPN works everywhere.
It’s probably a good idea not to use their clients (it’s often not open source or you can’t verify if the binary was built from the source, etc.), use OpenVPN client instead, all decent VPN services provide configs for it.
But even if you want to use the client provided by the VPN service, I think most of them support Linux.
I’ve always used windscribe. Sure it’s cli only, but it’s very friendly if you’re not completely afraid of anything cli. And you can set it to autoconnect on startup, so it’s set and forget basically.
TorGuard VPN. As far as I know, it’s the only one with an official GUI for Linux.
Thank you. That first command, should it still say “-gnome” at the end if I’m using KDE as my desktop environment? I’m not sure if it will matter.
Awesome! I will have to check that out.
TBH, I’m not 100% sure because I don’t use KDE. I’m assuming it will need it still and it wouldn’t hurt anyway. When you install KDE on Pop, you aren’t removing GNOME, so it may still have some use, but I don’t know.
Whatever Network Manager KDE uses needs to be able to “Import from file” to get your config connected. Should be easy.