It’s less complicated than it looks like. The text is just a poorly written mess, full of options (Fedora vs. Ubuntu, repo vs. no repo, stable vs. beta), and they’re explaining how to do this through the terminal alone because the interface that you have might be different from what they expect. And because copy-pasting commands is faster.
Can’t I just download a file and install it? I’m on Ubuntu.
Yes, you can! In fact, the instructions include this option; it’s under “Installing the app without the Mullvad repository”. It’s a bad idea though; then you don’t get automatic updates.
A better way to do this is to tell your system “I want software from this repository”, so each time that they make a new version of the program, yours get updated.
but I have no idea what I’m doing here.
I’ll copy-paste their commands to do so, and explain what each does.
The first command boils down to “download this keyring from the internet”. The keyring is a necessary file to know if you’re actually getting your software from Mullvad instead of PoopySoxHaxxor69. If you wanted, you could do it manually, and then move to the /usr/share/keyrings directory, but… it’s more work, come on.
The second command tells your system that you want software from repository.mullvad.net. I don’t use Ubuntu but there’s probably some GUI to do it for you.
The third command boils down to “hey, Ubuntu, update the list of packages for me”.
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
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.
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.
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
Frankly in this case even a simple bash script would do the trick. Have it check your distro, version, and architecture; if you got curl and stuff like this; then ask you if you want the stable or beta version of the software. Then based on this info it adds Mullvad to your repositories and automatically install it.
I like them, even for software installation. Partially because they’re lazy - it takes almost no effort to write a bash script that will solve a problem like this.
That said a flatpak (like you proposed) would look far more polished, indeed.
I have a very unusual workflow. In addition to not stacking windows, I don’t minimize them either. Instead, I spread them out over many workspaces. Per workspace, I usually only have 1 or 2 windows, but I ‘group’ workspaces to keep semantically related windows together.
And I do that, by having all workspaces in a column and just placing windows in neighboring workspaces + leaving workspaces empty between the groupings. I also have a minimap for my workspaces in my panel, to just keep track of all of this.
I like this workflow a lot, because it maps semantics to location. It feels like a desk where you just place related documents next to each other and might place some documents more in the middle, others in a faraway corner.
This is in contrast to the traditional Windows workflow or the workflow that many tiling folks use, where the first workspace is for web browsing etc…
Those use groupings based on the kind of task you do in them (often effectively being tabs in an application), like web browsing. They don’t group by the topic, e.g. you might frantically research ants and use a separate browser window, separate text editor etc., all grouped up for ants.
Now, traditional use of workspaces does allow this grouping by topics, by just assigning each workspace a topic. But personally, I found that too static.
Like, yeah, I have some larger, completely distinct topics, but often I’ll just quickly research bees and that’s kind of ant-related, but doesn’t need to be fully mixed with that either. I’d rather just place it to the side of the ant stuff.
I do this too, but additionally group these outputs strategically on my 4 displays. I never thought of it like a desk with papers on it but that’s very much what it is. And also how I organize papers on the few occasions that I do that.
That’s pretty much what I do as well. It was an absolute game-changer for me when I discovered tiling WMs some ~7 years ago, because it meant super consistent keyboard shortcuts for getting to exactly what I wanted to interact with. I know where individual apps/tasks go, so I put them there. And then when I need to switch to them, it’s as straightforward as Super+[workspace].
Also helps a ton that i3wm’s workspaces only take up a single monitor at a time, which makes it excellent for jumping between monitors.
None of this is set in stone, but I usually follow a relatively consistent pattern:
Center Monitor
1: Primary/“serious tasks” web browser
4: Any remote or virtualized desktop I might have open at the time
6: Image/video editors. Also sometimes just misc usage.
8: Development web browser next to neovim
9: Steam/games
10: Misc. Often a DBMS or file manager
11: Misc. Often where I put any secondary tasks or second projects I need to reference
12: Misc. Often where I’ll stick any long-running tasks that I just need to check on every now and again.
I don’t do that (again, too static for me), but I have larger meta-workspaces still, which group 20 workspaces each into very big, very distinct topics like “Orga” and “Work”.
I have attended or been involved with five different state universities and a few different community colleges. For computer science, aside from one glaring exception, the default has been some flavor of Linux. The earliest for me at a school was Fedora 7. I think they had been running Solaris in the late 90s; not sure what was before that.
The only glaring exception is Georgia Tech. Because of the spyware you have to install for tests, you have to use Windows. Windows in a VM can be flagged as cheating. I’m naming and shaming Georgia Tech because they push their online courses hard and then require an operating system that isn’t standard for all the other places I’ve been or audited courses.
If you are talking about the computers themselves having Linux on them by default or dual bootable, then I’m kinda jealous. At the community college I attend, the computer lab for CS and IT related classes has only windowss 10.
The high quality institutions have Linux in their labs (either a separate lab or dual boot) and a server with say access for training ML models etc.
The dodgy ones have only Windows with no software and require students to buy a second laptop and install Linux. If they don’t the students fail. Those tests were done in handwriting but they are still an accredited university :(
Well, when you get from 3 to 2000 in only a few years, the vast majority of these versions will be unusable. No wonder they had to drop everything after 11…
what kinds of tech jobs allow workers to choose what OS they use? where I live it seems most tech jobs won’t even let you install you your own software preferences unless its on their approved list, let alone install your own OS. they’re too worried about company security and IT’s ability to manage the hardware
I work in threat detection research, and since most of what I’m looking at is people trying to get frisky with a Linux server my job is fine with using Linux for our work computers
Dev jobs and data scientists often get a lot of leeway.
Very big tech companies tend to be more open to it. When I was at AWS their threat model was basically to treat every end user device as untrusted, which then meant that they didn’t rely on keeping laptops locked down for security.
Yes, that’s exactly what it is. Most of my problems with clipboard on plasma were due to a misconfigured clipboard manager. Does this happen only on Kate or other applications, too?
Cory Doctorow has a book, “Walkaway” that is basically exploring the politics of FOSS on a societal scale. It’s pretty nerdy obv but I enjoyed it and it doesn’t overly glamourize any political system the way you’d typically see in political fiction.
There’s a book called Opt-Out from Rory Price about a future where humanity starts using AR more and more to the point that it’s almost obligatory to have a device of this kind for everything, even as ID. It then talks about a group that develops a free/libre version of this device’s OS and they have to decide about personal issues or try to maintain their views. It’s entertaining and not too long, but I think it shows a very possible future.
I haven’t heard from its author in some time, but I think they discovered they were someone else too ;), that’s why I love this book.
I use Linux at the office. I’m the only employee at my company who does.
I haven’t had many issues collaborating with others using libreoffice while they use MS office. I do keep a Windows VM running for those somewhat rare instances where I need Windows for something though. I also needed to invest quite some time to figure out Linux alternatives for everything (how to use company VPN, how to get MS Teams working, how to connect to network drives, etc).
But so far so good. Been 100% Linux at work for maybe ~1.5 years?
I’m running arch on my Chromebook I followed the wiki for WiFi then ran the arch install command and set up xfce4. That worked with xbacklight and hot keys setup. I needed a script from mrchromebox to get the speakers working as well but everything else worked out of the box.
If you want a little bit of hand holding to ease you into Arch, Endeavour OS is a pretty smooth distro that makes the install and configuration easier.
Interesting! Looks pretty slick. Might be a nice stepping stone into that world. This chromebook is so old that it could be a perfect playground for this sorta thing. I don’t have any important files/apps or anything on it that I’m afraid of damaging or being without. Thanks for the suggestion.
fun tip, if you have a samba share and your devices are in the same network, use a file manager that can connect to local network (like explorer by speed software), and transfer your files wirelessly. it seems to be equally fast too, i haven’t used a cable for ages except for killing updaters and bloatware with adb.
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