We appreciate your feedback. We wanted to let you know we're currently working on a new app. In general, the Linux app does lack features in comparison to our Windows application, this has to do mainly with 1) the fact that the Linux team is quite small compared to the window team and 2) the linux team is quite recent. Differently than the other platforms, Linux is an extremely fragmented OS. To support it means supporting a galaxy of combinations among distributions, network subsystems, service subsystems, key stores, desktop environment. In the last year we have been working hard to re-build the foundations of a new Linux application from the ground up. The new app is designed to be solid, extensible, and future-proof, and will allow our engineers to ship faster new features, like WireGuard, and all those that are presently missing from the current app. The alpha has been released, which you can check out here: https://protonvpn.com/support/linux-prerelease/. We're working towards a public beta. Rest assured, our aim is to have the linux app on par with the other clients. The new version (v4) is very flexible and it will be much easier for the community to contribute.
Thank you for the comment! I truly wish you all the best, I've been a customer since you started. But not a VPN customer anymore.
You might suggest your support team repeat what you said rather than an endless loop of submitting logs with no timeline for a fix or obvious intent to release one at all. In lieu of any other information or even meaningful acknowledgement of the problem, I gave up and switched to mullvad. I waited three years for this to work right and your comment is the first I've heard that there is even a Linux team working on it.
I'm using the most recent Ubuntu LTS version recently reinstalled with no other customization to the network configuration. This shouldn't be a hard target to make work. And to be clear, this is two different Ubuntu desktops with different CPU vendors manufactured seven years apart. Maybe it's just me but when I get the same issues over clean reinstalls of the OS over multiple years and multiple computers using one of the most popular distributions...
I dunno, but releasing (at least three!) new offerings while I'm sitting here for years sending bug reports sends a message about priorities.
They didn't even feel it was worth mentioning that there is an alpha to test! So bad!
Any idea if the new one removed all the dependency on systemd? I know it's the most common among distributions, but plenty of popular ones are using OpenRC, for example, and can't use their client at all because of it.
It’s okay if you use a regular OpenVPN client, but yes I agree that they could at least clarify that the Proton VPN client is broken for most Linux use-cases.
"Logical server not found" happened 132 times while out of town for two days. I also use an Ubuntu LTS pretty recently reinstalled with minimal network customization, so I guess that other person was very lucky. This happens on two different Ubuntu computers with different graphics cards and CPU vendors so I don't think I'm imagining things.
If I enable the kill switch, it can convince itself there is no network connection (for itself) because of its own kill switch. I turn the kill switch off and back on and it's fine. That's ridiculous.
They only support udp and tcp in their Linux app. The Android app literally has more features and stability.
On the other hand, now that I've switched to mullvad everything is at least apparently fine. I've been submitting error logs to proton for years, I was one of their first customers and really really wanted them to be good. Instead they just ask me to switch between tcp and udp over and over to provide new logs despite not installing a new version. It's pathetic.
And no, I don't buy the Linux market share thing when it's a VPN! Lol, it's not a video game. Their competitors seem to work great and value the Linux market. Years is enough patience, they redesigned their logo, released drive, and released this without fixing the basic issues with their existing products.
I'm done trying, it's wasting so much time trying to deal with their support now that they clearly just don't care about it. So I'm done.
In the end, we can only rely on anecdotal evidence, but my experience is that it doesn't work on NixOS and the issues are also mostly full of people who encounter multiple problems [1, 2, 3].
I don't know what I did to get so lucky. I'm on Ubuntu and have the following versions: cli@3.13.0, protonvpn-nm-lib@3.14, proton-client@0.7.1
I've even written a couple of tools that manage my connection through the CLI automatically and it all Just Works. The only issue I ever had was when I had to force shutdown my machine for an unrelated reason and I didn't have an internet connection until I opened and closed Proton VPN. I'm sure someone smarter than me could have just reset the interface they were using or something
It's clearly a worthwhile investment of resources to their major competitors like Mullvad and IVPN, whose Linux clients are just as good as their Windows/macOS clients, if not better. In contrast, ProtonVPN's Linux app is so painfully buggy to use that you're better off just generating and using Proton Wireguard config files with command-line Wireguard instead.
Wow, I triggered a lot of linux folks. It was just a curious question. And I have another thought, not gonna answer all of you, sorry:
Wouldn't $linuxuser just not simply install something like keypass w/o having to pay for anything? How many services/apps is the average linux user paying for?
I have used linux for ages before I moved to maco. So my bet is: not much. Why then, as a company, would I try to get people to give me money when they are used to getting stuff for free? And would rather tinker with some half-arsed solution (on average) instead of paying $5 per month?
Maybe sentiment has shifted since I was around. Maybe it was the Arch crowd. But my impression was: "I want it free as in free beer and open".
It could be the other way around, their Linux market share is poor due to their poor support of it. Also, the types of people who use Linux also tend to be the types of people who would be interested in their product.