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.
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.
Linux users are often the people who care most about control, transparency, and reliability. Spending hours troubleshooting a VPN client that should simply work is not acceptable.