I just switched over from Windows and MacOS for my daily driver. So far I am loving the experience, but finding the ProtonVPN experience to be pretty bad compared to the Windows and MacOS applications. The GUI is incredibly clunky. It lacks the same settings menus as MacOS and Windows. Its overall a much worse experience and I mostly result to using the command line interface to connect.
Have any other Linux users experienced a similar level of disappointment?
We are aware that Linux users are really privacy-conscious. Unlike 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 rebuild ground up the foundations of a new Linux application. 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. We’ll release a preview version as soon we have one that you can use daily, so stay tuned!
Try the Linux cli - it’s a much better experience. Better performance, better stability, consistent connection, the kill switch works, and you don’t have a GUI leaving giant memory leaks eating all your RAM.
Yep, I hate to be negative but the Linux app is borderline unusable compared to the Windows app. It regularly freezes, claims to be connected when it isn’t, or just completely kills my internet connection entirely.
Mullvad’s Linux app blows Proton’s out of the water and gives me zero issues in comparison. I’ve given up waiting for Proton to release the new Linux app they’ve been claiming is coming for years now and am a happy customer at Mullvad now.
Yes it does. I use Mullvad now. If its not fixed by the time my subscription runs out, I am moving on totally. Can’t believe ive wasted this much time and money on this.
i’ve been starting to use torrent on my phone to sync it to my arch desktop via syncthing bc proton gui sucks so bad lately.
gonna try the cli later.
Have used the ProtonVPN GUI on Linux quiet a lot but never experienced such failures. Killswitch worked all the time, no freezing so far. Tunnelling was not suddenly turned off.
Only issue I had was with the permanent killswitch. Once it was enabled I had trouble connecting to the Internet when rebooting.
Try the Windscribe app…
Arch support + Full Linux GUI
Touchscreen functionality isn’t top-notch tho…
Yes! Totally not worth the money invested for a long term. I am veering towards Mullvad once the subscription ends. Not going to reinvest for a long term. Mullvad is cheaper and better in many ways. Proton despite the commitment to open source has the worst applications for Linux. I am not familiar with CLI and I am not willing to invest time to figure out how it works.
Must agree on this one. the linux app is the worst. Be careful sometimes even though you are seeing the vpn working, for some reason the connection is still working through the ISP. Happened to me a couple times. Using Fedora 37. Also, the missing option like tunneling make it even worse. Oh, and of course not being able to use WireGuard… I hope one day we will have a decent app for Linux.
I totally agree. Terrible linux support is the only reason i stil don’t have paid plan. Lack of many features that are available in other os. I’m following if anythong will change in future but i don’t think so
I could not even start Proton GUI application on Ubuntu 20.04, because of GTK critical error. Now I’m using Proton CLI and this is a good alternative for me.
But I would really like them to rewrite Proton GUI application from scratch with Qt Framework.
I think that the choice of GTK was a huge mistake. This framework is just one large piece of garbage - from both points of view - devs and user experience.
Most serious, quality and useful apps for Linux (about 90%) are uses Qt Framework.
GTK is unpopular. Every year more and more existing Linux software are rewritten with Qt Framework. It’s stable and gives better look’n’feel experience.
GTK development is chaotic. The developers themselves don’t know what they want. It looks like that GTK project is one endless sandbox for their crazy experiments… But they never lead to anything good. With each release they change the framework, removing, breaking or constantly changing the necessary features.
Qt is just best crossplatform framework. Simple to learn and easy to use. If you create serious, quality and stable software for Linux, the best choice is Qt. It’s simple. So please, re-build Proton app with Qt. It’s not difficult. Your app will look, feel and work much better in all distributions. Please re-build it with Qt for better future!
I’ve switched to Nord because of it
I download the ovpn-configuration files and import them in the network configuration directly. No problems so far
If you have the right router cant it be right there at the gateway? I have a microtik and some day in this month may in fact finish setting up wireguard with IP6 testing. (I had it working fine until that BentroNet from someplace way better than them, Chicago unexplainable anomaly cut people, or who knows maybe just me, off from direct connection). (and charge more than before)(and lie about bumping down service and price, perpetual pending).
I have some subpar dlink and linksys access points that dont give much of a damn, not sure if they would be good for something like that.
i also use the CLI because the GUI is too slow to load and has no option to start on startup. the CLI has its issues as well: no wireguard, no way to list available servers and their status / load, no way to automatically switch to a better server when the load gets high, occasional issues with connection dropping or kill switch malfunctioning.
overall it’s really disappointing and i’ve been waiting for the promised new cross-platform client for months now, but not much has happened.
The Linux application is unusable, so I’m using KDE’s networking settings to connect automatically. I use mostly Debian based distros, but occasionally other flavors, too. Without a working Proton GUI for the connections, there is no way I’m upgrading to Proton Unlimited.
The cli app downloads X11 dependencies lol. It’s trash too. I’m assuming they just hired random cheap consultants to make them. You’re 100% better off downloading wireguard configs and just feeding them into other network managers.
I’d like to add that it’s not a valid excuse for how crap the Linux experience is especially when you pay that much. ProtonVPN is NOT cheap. Which is also fine to be expensive, but the value of the products for the $ is utter garbage.
I’d legit recommend switching to Mullvad and keeping ProtonMail until they sort this disaster out.
Yep, I hate to be negative but
Nah man we all need to be. Sure we should also applaud when they do a good thing (e.g. Browser extensions) but corporations won’t do anything until a fire is lit under their ass.
Ditto. Good idea. I am shifting to Mullvad by end of this year. Good bye Proton.