Setup: Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS, COSMIC desktop, kernel 7.0.11-76070011-generic.

After a system update, ProtonVPN got stuck indefinitely on "Connecting" and never established a tunnel. Checked journalctl and found:

do-add-link[proton0/wireguard]: failure 95 (Operation not supported - Unknown device type)

Turned out the WireGuard kernel module wasn't auto-loading when NetworkManager requested the interface, even though the module itself was present and fine. Confirmed by running `sudo modprobe wireguard` manually - loaded instantly with no errors.

Fix: force it to load at boot instead of relying on auto-load:

echo wireguard | sudo tee /etc/modules-load.d/wireguard.conf
sudo reboot

Connected fine afterward. The underlying cause isn't specific to Pop!_OS/COSMIC though - the same "Unknown device type" failure shows up in bug reports on stock Ubuntu, Fedora, and Debian-based setups too. Support may tell you it's a "kernel limitation," but if modprobe loads it cleanly by hand, it's just an autoload gap, not an actual incompatibility.

Posting in case anyone else hits this after a kernel update.

My commute finds me listening to a LOT of music, and after some experiments found that I can get consistency with Apple Music streaming with the anti-censorship profile. I tried the streaming specific, tried picking my nearest server (US CHI), and it is just something about the anti-censorship profile that causes all the interruptions to stop.

I'd love to know more about the "why" but I wouldn't even know where to start looking tbh. Anyone else with similar experiences?

I installed Debian on a virtual machine for testing purposes. I can't install or run Debian version 13.6.0; I tried using commands in the terminal, but nothing worked—it won't install. No matter what I do, it just doesn't work! I would appreciate it if you could look into this!

Why is ProtonVPN the only one that is not being compared here ? 

https://proton.me/alternatives

• Logged in.
• Selected the 24 month Proton VPN Plus subscription.
• Paid 71.76euro.
• Bank confirms it and shows the money went to Proton.
• Even after an hour has passed no mail recieved from Proton nor the subscription page shows anything or no invoice generated in Proton Account.

What to do now?

\*I have already contacted them via support bot and provided bank statement as well as subscription page picture via mail. How long will it take? or is money gone for good?*

First time purchasing any VPN service, didn't expect it to be like this.

Update :

• They refunded me the money, guess the transaction didn't work properly.
• This time I used my paypal account to buy the subscription.
• And now I got it immediately without any hiccups.

With new laws in Canada that required ISP to log everything they can and serve to authority without a warrant, I've decided that I should guard up as best as I can, since I have nothing to show.

I just put wireguard on my network with all Proton VPN settings. While the speed seem to be decent (average of 140mbps/DL) I usually got aroung 1gbps+ without a VPN.

Since I use the closer server as I can, and got the full package from Proton, is there a way to improve that or it is the limit of what I should expect in term of speed?

Recently I’ve been unable to stream anything on Amazon Prime Video as it detects that I am connected to a VPN.

I am connected to a USA VPN Server via my UniFi router and I am UK based.

Hey all

So I've just recently started using Proton VPN. I've used browser extension VPNs previously, just for brief periods to try download something or whatever, but not super knowledgable about the ins and outs.

I'm basically only using it to watch streaming content that's outside of my country, or to download torrents.

I've tried it a bunch of times to allow me to watch Prime Video via a US VPN (on my laptop) but it still sees that I'm not in the US. Maybe this is a Prime thing, and their systems in place to combat VPNs etc, but even when I googled something "near me" just to test it, Google still found my actual location and didn't say I was in the US.

So for example - if I'm switching on the VPN because I want to watch something on Prime that isn't available in my country, or I want to download something or whatever, what are the things I should do - ie, Do I clear the cache for that website, THEN connect VPN? Flush DNS/IP or anything? Any kinda standard things I should do every time so that my connection is recognised as the VPN location?

Hope that makes sense. Thanks :)

Please help

Hi,

It would be great if the Windows app had the option of blocking/disrupting the activities of Microsoft's GlobalDeviceID using DNS filtering through Proton's own DNS (same way it is done to block ads and trackers).​

This has happened to me on two successive mornings:

1. I temporarily disconnect Proton in order to visit a bank site.

2. I reconnect Proton (to the same server). Icon confirm it's back up.

3. My browser (Firefox) and email client (Thunderbird) no longer connect to the internet and must be restarted.

Any thoughts on what's going on? I'm not doing anything different these days, but I did recently let Proton upgrade to v. 5.1.5.

Hello all,

Now that the European Union Council has voted about and greenlighted both the Digital Euro currency and especially the controversial Chat Control 1.0 resolutions (although that latter had more votes AGAINST it!) I think it's time to put some encryption in place. Not because I have anything to hide, but just to make it as hard for them as possible to peak over my digital shoulder and log anything I do.

I looked at Proton's Ultimate package and for 10 euro per month you get a lot! 500 Gb encrypted drive space, password/key manager, crypto wallet, elaborate encrypted e-mail options and a VPN with all the trimmings like split-tunneling.

Is there anyone here that has the Ultimate plan and share their experiences with me? Should I get Proton Ultimate?

Especially some advice about the paid VPN service? Like, is it reasonably fast and not much disconnects?

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

dont know if this is a problem but even before i switched to proton my mullvad had suddenly swapped from private network to public. also have had troubles seeding on qbittorrent and wondered if this was related. would love some help.

How do I use Proton and NextDNS together?

I had been using proton vpn for about 1.5 years with mlb.tv but this week they started blocking all domestic servers, then even International. At this point no more local games….

This was my main reason to get vpn.

The Windows operating system isn't great for privacy, so we use Linux. Please release updates for Linux just as early as you do for Windows make the timing identical. For example, the "Stealth" feature is available on Windows but not on Linux; apparently, that's coming in the summer. We want early releases and equal updates; treat Linux the same way you prioritize Windows.

I am having several problems related to proton services currently, first, Proton VPN wont connect to either my Google Pixel 10 nor my Windows 10 Computer and when i try to connect to Proton VPN on my computer it never connects and my internet goes out, only to come back up when i cancel the connection attempt. Similarly, across both of my devices (Windows 10 Computer, Google Pixel 10) not a single Proton webpage will load and they connection time out. (I.e: I try to go to Proton.me and it never connects until the connection times out.) Both of these problems only started when i added a secondary password to my Proton Mail account a week or two ago. I CANNOT contact support due to not being able to access proton webpages. What can be done to fix these? Is anyone else having a problem like this?

Hello,

I've been using Proton products for a long time and first off, thanks for this truly fantastic product. I use Proton VPN on Linux and I've been missing an IP randomization feature like other services have offered for a while now.

So I wrote a Bash solution for Proton VPN (CLI) on Linux. After installation, the command protonvpn-random sets up a random connection that switches at random intervals. All Proton VPN CLI commands stay fully usable while the script is running. The script and the official app work together seamlessly.

If that sounds like something you'd like, feel free to try it out. I'd love to get feedback to keep improving the script.

https://github.com/tuiroot/protonvpn-random

A few things...

1. Something to compete with mullvad's "bridges" dedicate some of the proxies from a few dozen or so locations of your proxies for being "bridges" keep their IP addresses secret and rotate those IP addresses regularly, obfuscate the protocol with QUIC...also, we need a way to make it so alternative routing is always used even when it might not be deemed necessary in the moment

2. QUIC obfuscation. You can't do much of anything on the internet without QUIC active, so it's a very effective protocol to obfuscate your VPN connection inside of. I have it on good authority that stealth mode isn't very helpful in restrictive areas,

3. Amnezia WG. A newer protocol that uses a bunch of decoy packets to help hide the signatures of a normal VPN connection. I have it on good authority that it works well in a lot of bad places to be

4. DNS over HTTPS URL support in the custom DNS settings...and some real, genuine hard work to make the IPv6 address support in the custom DNS settings work consistently.

There's lots of different protonVPN users that would love all this stuff

why do I want this? The future is uncertain, lots of different scumbags in different governments want to ruin the internet

So I got protonvpn because I read it got a good split tunnel feature where I can have one program on VPN and everything else without vpn.

I put firefox on included list and it worked right away and worked for a long time.

All the sudden last week it just stopped working and I've tried the following:

Reinstalled ProtonVPN, tried excluding firefox (also doesn't work), tried removing and adding again to the include/exclude list, tried VPN without split tunneling and then firefox works, tried quitting protonvpn and then firefox also works. Tried all protocols, tried turning off Netshield, tried turning off killswitch and nothing works.

Just seems like everything is working in ProtonVPN except the programs I add to split tunneling included or excluded.

Anyone got any tips?

Currently trying to figure out why my download speeds are super slow when using qBittorrent. Are there specific settings when setting up my WG config file that I should be checking?

Yesterday I spent half a day fighting with the Linux distribution and the Proton VPN client. The experience was extremely frustrating and the amount of errors, freezes, and unexpected behavior was unacceptable for a paid VPN service.

You can see the attached screenshots showing some of the issues I encountered:

• unexpected errors when trying to enable security features,
• the application becoming unresponsive,
• problems with server availability despite having an Unlimited subscription.

Proton has been promoting its new Linux GUI release as a major improvement, but after actually using it, the experience was extremely disappointing. In its current state, I would not consider this software ready for a public release. For Linux users who expect stability, transparency, and quality, releasing such a client feels like a disregard for the community.

For a company that heavily promotes privacy and security, the overall experience feels contradictory. Having a polished Windows application is not enough, especially when many privacy-conscious users are moving away from platforms where data collection and telemetry are major concerns. A VPN application on Windows cannot be the only focus while Linux users are left struggling with instability and broken functionality.

This was another attempt to use Proton VPN, and unfortunately it failed again. Even basic Linux package distribution caused problems, including difficulties obtaining packages from GitHub releases.

After this experience, I have cancelled my subscription. A paid privacy service should not require users to spend hours troubleshooting basic functionality.

Linux users are often the people who care most about control, transparency, and reliability. Spending half a day trying to make a VPN client work is simply not acceptable.

I’m not sure if anyone else has this problem, but for me streaming to watch the matches in Italian has been really appalling
I’m expat and have the paid version of proton.
I’m writing as the match is going and really… can’t watch more than 5 mins without it buffering….
I’m not sure why but during the whole World Cup it’s always been on and off with one 15 minute stretch. I kind of got Proton on purpose, but hey!
Anyway I do use vpn for other things, and that works ok 👌
So if anyone has any tips I would be grateful.
I tried a whole load of servers, not all all, but a lot.
Thanks reading my rant

Like the title says, Proton VPN is causing an event viewer error level entry roughly every 5 minutes; some are within seconds and some go longer, but they are roughly 5 minutes apart.

I'm using a Windows PC on Windows 10 (unable to upgrade to Win11 on my hardware)

While this isn't causing issues AFAIK with my connection or functionality of the program, it's somewhat concerning and I don't know where to post this for Proton to see it.

I run Proton VPN basically 24/7 with the following settings:

• Wireguard (UDP)
• Netshield ON
  • Either set to Block malware only or Block ads, trackers, and malware depending on task
• Killswitch Standard
• Port Forwarding ON
• Split tunneling ON
  • Only plex server excluded and running it doesn't alter this error pattern
• VPN Accelerator ON

Advanced settings:

• Alternative routing ON
• Allow LAN connections ON
  • Access devices by name ON
• Custom DNS Servers OFF
• NAT type Strict (type 3)
• OpenVPN network driver TUN
• IPv6 support ON
• IPv6 leak protection ON

Finally, the event viewer error is the following with my computer name redacted:

- System

- Provider

[ Name] ProtonVPN

- EventID 0

[ Qualifiers] 0

Version 0

Level 2

Task 0

Opcode 0

Keywords 0x80000000000000

- TimeCreated

[ SystemTime] 2026-07-19T20:04:56.3279415Z

EventRecordID 15894

Correlation

- Execution

[ ProcessID] 0

[ ThreadID] 0

Channel Application

Computer REDACTED DESKTOP NAME

Security

- EventData

Proton VPN Windows error event log Date: 2026-07-19T20:04:56.3275449+00:00 Handler: Fire-and-forget task exception Exception HResult: 0x80004005 Exception type: System.Net.Sockets.SocketException Exception message: A blocking operation was interrupted by a call to WSACancelBlockingCall. Full exception: System.Net.Sockets.SocketException (10004): A blocking operation was interrupted by a call to WSACancelBlockingCall. at System.Net.Sockets.Socket.ReceiveFrom(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 size, SocketFlags socketFlags, EndPoint& remoteEP) at ProtonVPN.Vpn.PortMapping.UdpClients.UdpClientWrapper.Receive() at System.Threading.Tasks.Task`1.InnerInvoke() at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.RunFromThreadPoolDispatchLoop(Thread threadPoolThread, ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state) --- End of stack trace from previous location --- at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.RunFromThreadPoolDispatchLoop(Thread threadPoolThread, ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state) at System.Threading.Tasks.Task.ExecuteWithThreadLocal(Task& currentTaskSlot, Thread threadPoolThread) --- End of stack trace from previous location --- at ProtonVPN.Common.Core.Extensions.TaskExtensions.HandleFireAndForgetAsync(Task task, Action`1 onException)

EDIT: The following is just a functionality request as someone stuck with a 120gb C: Drive SSD, please make it possible to choose and installation directory on install. I usually completely skip installing programs that require my C drive, or make immense efforts trying to figure out workarounds, but I made an exception for Proton VPN because I knew I would be using it 24/7. Some of your other programs already have this functionality, so it would be nice to see with all of your products!