Maybe ProtonVPN will listen to the needs of Linux users now. Should the subreddit do a poll as well?
Maybe ProtonVPN will listen to the needs of Linux users now. Should the subreddit do a poll as well?
We are aware that Linux users are really privacy-conscious. 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 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 as we’ll have an MVP you can use daily, so stay tuned!
Why even have this poll? Do you support Linux or not? Anything less than feature parity to me is…well… not. If I watch a video of the features of your product and you “support” a platform and purchase the product based on that, and then end up with the terrible thing that is the Proton VPN Linux client…That’s not good. I mean…you see what platforms we are downloading and using….Its so insulting that you have to make a twitter popularity contest to help you “decide” how to allocate resources.
Also acting like users are somehow to blame here is laughable (this comes from other Proton users, not Proton) Just don’t support Linux then. Literally remove it from your website or release a client that is similar to what you have out for other platforms.
I know you have a new client coming. I get it, but you have had a new client coming for almost two years at this point.
When I discuss privacy either online or with people i know, at this point I’ve stopped recommending Proton. I love your mission, but you have a lot of half baked apps for various platforms and seems like your constantly moving your attention to the next new product that works on 2 out of 6+ platforms.
You’ve nearly burnt though the goodwill from me as a customer and my 2 year subscription is up in about 7 or so months. If I don’t have feature parity on a VPN at that time, I will be canceling my account permanently.
I am sorry to be a bit blunt, but Linux users whilst loud and vocal - - only proton knows truly how much % of the active user base are on that OS. this poll is not representative in a statistical manner.
For all we know it’s less a than 10% Linux. Which doesn’t mean they should have a subpar experience, but it does mean it would be fair to allocate development resources in higher amounts elsewhere.
Basically, be patient. They’ve heard you as they’ve outlined a Linux overhaul on the roadmap already.
In a recent AMA, Proton VPN said that less than 1% of their users are on Linux
So many top tier vpn overlook linux, or do not give it the setup it deserves.
I think the results might be a little skewed
Where is public api for Proton drive …. I don’t understand why???
I want Linux solely for steam deck functionality
What in the world is happening here? What is Proton supposed to be doing differently?
Step 1: Configure and download your preferred wireguard conf file.
Step 2: Import it into your network manager and set it as default on boot.
Step 3: Sandwich?
Do you need some kind of shiny Windows looking application? Why are you even using Linux? The whole point of Linux is to get rid of the bloatware and customize every aspect of your experience.
I use Proton VPN on all of my computers, tablets, and phones. I even run my Plex servers using Proton VPN via wireguard Docker containers. Electron Mail works great as an Outlook replacement.
If you feel you need some kind of hand holding from a software vendor, you need to download a Windows ISO and never look back.
I just threw the vpn on my gl.inet router with kill switch enabled and called it good. Sure hope it stays always connected as there is no real way to know if the kill switch fails. Damn router has an open API but nobody has bothered to write an app for Home Assistant, which would be a super easy way to be alerted of failures.
I have switched to Portmaster on my Linux desktop. The Proton VPN kinda worked, but it felt like endless beta…
Yay, this is so great to hear…oh wait, this is what you said in an email to me in February…and in a chat to me in October…and alluded to in a blog post a year ago. Proton, our goodwill and patience is being strained a bit too much. When the security vulnerabilities are published, it’s going to be too late.
If you really want to reduce the challenges related to the fragmentation between Linux distros … get really involved in the upstream OpenVPN project and related projects, and lets solve these challenges together.
When you get changes into the upstream project, it impacts all projects at once as they upgrade to newer versions further down the road.
The current development model of Proton is really holding your progress back, where you do most development work in-house and hack around things for your own ProtonVPN. This is counter productive and not in the open source spirit at all.
Yes, I know you publish the source code - but only after your in-house development has completed. You need to dare to flip that up-side-down.
Just for curiosity, I cloned your ProtonVPN/linux-app repo to see the current situations.
The repo history starts February 2021. There are 395 non-merge commits. 388 of them are made by a name which looks like a Proton employee. There are 9 contributors in total. Of those 8 left, there is on contributor (with a protonmail.com e-mail address) which has one commit which can be classified as more extensive. The 7 others are mostly just fixing tiny typos. You have closed 7 GH pull-reqs and have 7 open.
This certainly isn’t open source development. And this is a cultural challenge in Proton. It is the same situation in essentially every GitHub repo Proton pushes out to the public.
[UPDATE: Below is same statistics for the ProtonVPN/linux-cli repo]
- Repo starts: October 2020
- Total number of commits: 203
- Total number of contributors: 2 (both seems to be Proton employees)
- Pull-reqs: Total of 6, 4 open and 2 closed.
Why not Flatpak? Flatpak fixes the “Fragmentation” Issue.
I agree 100% with all you’ve said namely feature parity. Why should Windows users pay the same and get more? The blame game has gone on long enough and it’s why I’ve referred them to the government boards for fair practices in business in my country. Prob nothing to come from it but I like to stand up when I can.
I agree with you. I heard about ProtonVPN through the Linux community and when I got it. I realised Linux gets the short end of the stick.
I feel cheated. If ProtonVPN does not fix the client soon. I will be looking elsewhere for my VPN needs.
I was discussing the same but regarding U2F and Drive client for Linux all day.What I can not understand yet and they avoided the answer several times is… if this is an open source project WHY TF they don’t let the community to help them. We could solve most of the problems and finish the backing in weeks.
Do you think that I saw a twitter post of a poll viewed by ~21,400 people and voted on by 3,354 people and saw that as a statistical affirmation of user base and then posted it here without weighing the implications and shortcomings of such a poll? The fact that it’s a tweet notwithstanding, I think we can all agree that the Proton VPN twitter account isn’t some bastion of statistical authority. I was a part of the AMA with the founders when they outlined that Linux users were ~1-2% of their user base and I’ve been doing penetration and beta testing for Proton since well before then. I am actually in the testing pool for the new Linux client. You are right to point out the fact that this means nothing beyond being some random aggregate of a very short sample size to everyone else but you can rest easy knowing that I don’t assume anything outside of what the data shows; a twitter poll was recently done and a lot of Linux users were vocal. This is however the first time the Proton team has engaged users this way in a while. That brings me to the point of my post that nobody seemed to read or want to respond to:
Should the subreddit do a poll as well to expand the sample size and continue the push.
All good, when my subscription runs out in a few months I’ll be moving on.