Linux users, do you use the official app, OpenVPN, or command line?

VPN
1

Which one do you prefer?

2

i am curious about something. i was trying to run protonvpn on my chromebook thorughl linux environment. i was able to download the program and open it but it does not connect. i can press the connect button but it just brings up the close button and doesnt connect. is it possible to connect via linux on chromebook (debian i believe) or can i only run it through android on chrome os?

3

The old CLI as my system use NO systemd.

4

I prefer command line, but official protonvpn-cli just doesn’t work on linux.

5

openvpn. the official app is complete crap. slow, crashes, disconnects.

6

I use the command line tools. That way I can automate things.
I also wrote a little script to show vpn connection info from

protonvpn-cli status

on my bar. That way I get the informations that I want without having to open a big gui app.

7

Hey u/stevenomes

If you want to run ProtonVPN on your chromebook then you should download it form the android store.

8

but official protonvpn-cli just doesn’t work on linux

It always worked for me and it has way more options that the app.

9

That sounds cool.

I know there is also an official support for topbar icon, but I am not using the app so I don’t know how that works.

Can you please share your code on GitHub?

10

Thanks, can you confirm vpn installed by play store will still work for application installed on Linux? What I mean is I use a different web browser on Chromebook through Linux, but the system is divided off between Linux and chrome os to keep them separate. When I looked originally at the activity graph on proton vpn (installed through play store) it wasn’t showing much activity (volume/speed etc when I was using Linux apps online. However I tried it again and it is showing some activity. I’m assuming even though Linux container is separate they still have to connect through same internet channel.

11

Yes got it work finally. Protonvpn have very poor documentation.

12

Well it is basically only a awk one liner to get and print the server name and the load. And in case there is no connection it prints out No connection.

#!/bin/bash
printf "VPN - "
protonvpn-cli s | awk ' /Server:/ {print $2} /Load:/ {print $2 $3} /No / {print $1, $4}' | paste -sd '  '

This script gets executed every 5 seconds by the bar that I use (Polybar) and the output text is shown in my bar. The output looks like this:

VPN - JP#61 Load:15%

or this:

VPN - No connection.
13

I can not confirm that as we haven’t tested it that way. Also, I’m not sure about your entire configuration but to give you as an example:

If you’re running windows and linux in WSL, then our client won’t work as there are too many dependencies that are found on usual linux desktop distributions, which are not present in WSL.

14

by the bar that I use (Polybar)

What? Is that different with GNOME’s default top bar?

15

Yes, I don’t run gnome or any desktop environment. I just run a window manager (i3) and a bar application called polybar.
A bar like polybar is made to be easily customisable. So it is pretty easy to just place the text output from a script somewhere on the bar.

I don’t know how that would work with the gnome bar.

I would imagine that there is some gnome bar app that can show some text?

16

Thanks. I will search GNOME extensions.

17

I didn’t have time to look thoroughly. I found these with a quick search just now: