Get started with Proton VPN
It’s easy, fast and free (or you can pay if you want). Proton VPN is one way to see what a VPN can do for you.
Based on the previous two pages, you might get the impression that most VPNs are operations run or used by ne’er-do-wells. That might be true, but we didn’t say it. You might well be looking for advice on how to run a VPN on Linux. And if that’s the case, we can help. A number of VPN providers boast Linux support, but on the flip side, we’ve seen anecdotal evidence that this support may not really be all that good. We won’t name any names here, but just because a VPN offers a Linux client, it doesn’t mean your experience using it will be smooth. You also should, as we’ve hinted earlier, be very cautious about running proprietary VPN tools on your machine.
Ideally, you want your VPN provider to integrate directly with NetworkManager (or whatever you use to administer your connectivity). This way, you won’t run into any difficulties running its own client (which may only work on a particular version of a particular distro, and may even not work particularly well there). If you’re only interested in routing web traffic through a VPN, most providers maintain a Chrome or Firefox plugin. If you look on the Chrome Web Store or Firefox Extension pages (or the equivalent for your favourite browser), you’ll find no shortage of free VPN tools that purport to offer maximum privacy and security. Again, be wary of these. Some of them boast hundreds of thousands of users, but that doesn’t mean you should trust them. If you want a free VPN, one company you can probably trust is Proton, the privacy-focussed Swiss company behind the popular ProtonMail service. Its Proton VPN offering launched in 2017 and has over 5,500 servers in 91 countries. Don’t get too excited, though; the free tier currently only allows you to choose from six countries (this depends on your region – in our tests, only Japan, the Netherlands and US were available). We should also stress that Proton did not sponsor this feature in any way. We just quite like its service and the fact that it has open sourced all its code. In the interests of equality, we’ll also give a nod to Mozilla and Mullvad, both of which are premium services that have open source clients. Windscribe has a free tier and also has open source clients. PureVPN, ExpressVPN and Private Internet Access (PIA) all support Linux.