On Sat, 2023-08-19 at 22:34 -0400, Walter Dnes wrote: > 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?
The real answer, that I suspect you're looking for, is no. There's no custom software required in almost any case. Most commercial VPNs are based on OpenVPN. They might publish their own client, but it is just a dolled-up (non-free) wrapper around OpenVPN. All of the real work is done in a configuration file. If you sign up for an account, they will provide you with a set of credentials, and a configuration file that will connect you to one or more of their endpoints. You can drop that configuration file right into /etc/openvpn/ and go. The provider I use (omitted to avoid any pretense of shilling) provides a dozen or so different "exit" points in the US. I keep configuration files for a handful of them so I can switch at will (via a simple shell script) in case one stops working or I need to switch locations for whatever reason.
