Walter Dnes wrote:
> I've been on Gentoo for years and years, but I've never used a VPN, so
> consider me an absolute newbie. Canadian big news media has
> successfully lobbied our government to implement a link tax. Google has
> decided to avoid the tax by not linking to it in Google search. This
> morning I tried to find some news about the Russian invasion from my
> desktop PC, and the results were brutal. No links from any Canadian
> sources (as expected) or US (CNN) or UK (BBC). Talk about draconian. I
> need a VPN to make me "self-identify" as being in the USA, or wherever,
> so that Google doesn't censor news on me.
>
> Many commercial VPNs claim to support linux. Do they do this at the
> OS level as an executable, or at the browser level as an extension?
> Extension would be bad for me, because Chrome and Firefox extensions
> don't work on Pale Moon (my "daily driver"). I notice the existance of
> a "net-vpn" category in the repo, too. What works for people here, and
> how well? What are your experiences?
>
I been using Surfshark and openvpn for over a year. They have a pretty
large list of countries, multiple cities in some countries, to pick
from. I deal with torrents and that is my reason for the need of a VPN,
just in case some may be questionable.
I suspect that some features are not available because I use openvpn
instead of the software Surfshark provides for other binary distros but
it does work with openvpn software. Once I start openvpn and give it a
minute to set up the connection and all, it works great. It is a system
wide VPN tho. Everything goes through the VPN. There may be a way to
create a tunnel but I've never tried it. Sometimes, I'd like for a
particular profile of Firefox to bypass the VPN but it may be
complicated to set up so I never tried.
I do have one bill that I have to disable the VPN to pay. It picks up
that I'm not where I should be, and have always been in the past, and it
doesn't allow me to login. My bank did the same at first but I
contacted them and they adjusted the setting on my account to allow me
to login with the VPN running or not. I did tell them three cities I
use tho, IP of course varies. No problems since. If you just use yours
on occasion, this won't likely affect you as you will likely only run
yours when needed. For simplicity, I run mine 24/7.
The biggest thing to look for when picking a VPN, no logs. Some VPN
companies do manage to have logs and those can lead to problems if you
are trying to get around legal issues. Given you are trying to work
around laws in your country, I'd suggest no logs being a requirement.
Keep in mind, this also limits the ability to assist with problems as
there is no logs for them to look at except for your connection logs
that is generated locally. So far, I only had one problem and I
switched to another city and it worked great ever since. I did inform
them of the city I was having problems with in case others report a
similar problem. No idea if it ever affected anyone else.
I might add, for a while, I used Surfshark in my router. That however
created problems with my cell phone. Some apps just did not like that I
was somewhere else. It changed a lot. That's why I switched to using
openvpn on the computer itself. My cell phone knows I'm here in the
real world while the computer appears to be elsewhere.
If you pick Surfshark, I should be able to help set it up. If I recall
correctly, you pick the config file for the city/location you want,
rename it to openvpn.conf and place it in /etc/openvpn directory. Start
openvpn and it should work. I think that is it. I usually add the name
of the file to the content of the file as a comment so I know what file
the city belongs to easily. It makes it easier if I want to switch
cities. I do that sometimes, just to keep anyone guessing. ROFL
That help any? I'd be surprised if the same won't work for others as it
does Surfshark.
Dale
:-) :-)
