https://mullvad.net/en/help/install-mullvad-app-linux

Trying to install VPN and these are the instructions Mullvad is giving me. This is ridiculous. There must be a more simple way. I know how to follow the instructions but I have no idea what I’m doing here. Can’t I just download a file and install it? I’m on Ubuntu.

    • @[email protected]OP
      34•3 years ago

      Thanks for the explanation. However trying to run the first command gives me sudo: curl: command not found

      So I’m stuck right there in the first step lol

      • @[email protected]
        62•3 years ago

        I would have guessed that Ubuntu would install it by default since its a very common way to get stuff from the internet (when in the terminal), but apparently not (the other option is wget which is most likely installed, but that uses a different way to get the stuff).

        You should be able to install curl with sudo apt install curl

        • @[email protected]OP
          21•3 years ago

          Really appreciate your replies dude. So many are being a bit of an jerks here, but you (and few other) have been really helpful.

            • astraeus
              3•3 years ago

              Yeah, once you work in Linux for so long seeing someone ask about curl missing is really easy to take for granted that we all started there, we’ve all been fresh on Linux. A lot of people take pride in their experience, but they shouldn’t lord it over those who are learning to advance themselves. It’s completely counter to why Linux even exists.

      • @[email protected]
        9•3 years ago

        Wow, interesting. You may be able to install curl to fix that like this:

        sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install curl

        Can’t hurt to try

    • @[email protected]English
      26•3 years ago

      This is a great explanation. And really well written. Thank you for taking the time to put it together

    • u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org)English
      9•3 years ago

      Hmm… ProtonVPN team solved this in better way. They put the repo configuration stuff into DEB file, so it’s just a matter of double clicking it and clicking install on Debian-based and Ubuntu-based (I know Ubuntu is Debian-based) distros and then installing the ProtonVPN client through either GUI or CLI package manager, whichever you wish to use. More newbie-friendly.

      Unfortunately, I also just learned they dropped support for Arch Linux :(

      We’d love to support the new app for arch Linux but honestly we’re understaffed and don’t have the bandwidth to be supporting the same distros that we did before with the previous client (4 packages before vs 10 packages now). If anyone from the community is willing to make AUR packages for themselves and publish/maintain them we’re totally fine with that, as long as people keep in mind that it would be an unofficial version because we currently don’t support arch Linux with the new v4 app.

      Also if anyone’s interested: https://boards.eu.greenhouse.io/proton/jobs/4140067101

      • @[email protected]
        9•3 years ago

        Hmm… ProtonVPN team solved this in better way. They put the repo configuration stuff into DEB file, so it’s just a matter of double clicking it and clicking install

        I was wondering how they’d solve signature checking and key installation - and looking at their page they seem to recommend skipping checking package signatures which, to be honest, isn’t a super good practice - especially if you’re installing privacy software.

        Please don’t try to check the GPG signature of this release package (dpkg-sig –verify). Our internal release process is split into several part and the release package is signed with a GPG key, and the repo is signed with another GPG key. So the keys don’t match.

        I get it’s more userfriendly - and they provide checksums, so not a huge deal, especially since these are not official Debian packages, but the package signing has been around since 2000, so it’s pretty well established procedure at this point.

    • Telex
      8•3 years ago

      Any instructions that say sudo curl should be thrown out immediately.

      • bjorney
        4•3 years ago

        Is curl so untrusted that you would prefer to use 3 commands (one which still needs root permissions) instead?

        • Telex
          2•3 years ago

          The point is that an HTTPS request does not need root permissions. Other steps might, and that’s indeed high risk.

          • bjorney
            2•3 years ago

            The curl that ships with apt is ubiquitous enough that I trust doing sudo curl xxx yyy more than enough if it means avoiding typing curl xxx /tmp/yyy && sudo mv /tmp/yyy yyy

      • @[email protected]English
        2•3 years ago

        Agreed it’s not best practice. But when somebody is saying the individual step-by-step is too complicated, you want to give them the simplest command possible. Even if it is more risky. It’s a trade off of accessibility versus complexity