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.
Not specific to Mullvad, but you can use flatpak or your distro’s package manager (probably apt) to install programs, On Ubuntu, you can open the software program and search the programs to install it, that should be the first thing to do when you want to install something rather than going to the website.
Yes and I do and while it is great for infrastructure, magnitudes better than anything Microsoft ever offered as a reasonable desktop it’s a fucking a joke.
As others have mentionned downloading the .deb and running it will also work, but I feel nobody gave your a tldr of why you may want to follow those instructions instead, so here it is:
Those instructions configure your package manager (apt) with a new repository for this application.
The upside to that is that anytime you will look for updates, this app will also get updated.
It’s a bit more work up front, but it can pay off when you have dozens of app updating as part of normal system operations.
Imagine a world where windows updates would also update all your software, that’s what this is.
Also, no, this is not an ideal way to do this. Ideally every package you want is in your distro’s repos so you’d just need to do “apt install [package]”.
The reason this one isn’t is because mullvad wants to make sure you use their tested, secure, and updated version and they don’t want to maintain that for every distro. So they have you configure your package manager to use their repos.
This is relatively uncommon to come across in Debian. You’ll normally only find it in security applications or very niche ones. The Debian repos aren’t the most comprehensive but they’ll contain the vast majority of common softwares.
My favorite part of this thread is everyone just saying copy and paste the commands so it will work. Like we should totally get users into the habit of running random commands off the net as root.
“I have no idea what I’m doing here” <- Happens in the beginning. How about you start by trying to know what exactly you are doing? Let me give you a fasttrack…
The first command you get in the instructions is curl. It is generally used to download stuff from a networked server.
1.1. To understand the -fsSLo in the command, I strongly advise you to check out the manual of curl using man curl in a terminal.
The second command in the instructions is echo “something” | sudo tee some/file
2.1 Here you see 3 commands echo , sudo and tee. 2.1.1 Again, you can use man command-name to check the manual pages for these commands 2.2 There is a | symbol over here. It is called the “pipe symbol”, which is what you can use to search for it. It is usually difficult to search for the symbol itself and I haven’t found a man page for it, but open man bash and look for “Pipelines” and you’ll know what it is about. Use Link, Link and Link to help yourself understand this.
e.g. If you have a program called Xorg from 5 years ago, and a program called mesa from 5 years ago and Xorg depends upon mesa to work. Here, if you replace your mesa with a new, recent mesa yourself, there is a good chance Xorg will not work. The Package Manager prevents that from happening.
The gist of what the instructions are making you do is, telling the Package Manager that there is another place from where you want it to look for packages.
To understand man pages better, check out this link.
Don’t think too badly of people dissing you in the comments. They are tired and fed up of help vampires. Hopefully, you can try not to become one.
Try and build your own process of understanding the commands you see on the internet before entering them into the terminal.
The comments telling you to just follow the instructions, are coming from the perspective that you don’t have the patience and determination to understand them yourself, which, a lot of people don’t. I will leave it upto you to determine which one you decide to be. It is, however, a bad idea to follow instructions on any website, just because it “seems legit”. You can’t really say you “trust” the site until you have the ability to find out for yourself whether you want to trust it.
The same MFs on here that rush to tell someone that Linux is easy and intuitive are the same ones that can’t keep a small talk conversation for more than 5 mins, a social activity that humans have been doing for thousands of years.
My words might be a little broad, harsh, and even hurtful, but just a reminder that not all of us are good at learning the same things.
We didn’t all come out of the womb knowing how to socialize or use Linux, but if we look back far enough, we can all relate to the struggles it takes to learn something new, and how much it sucks when someone treats you like you’re stupid just because things sometimes don’t click
That is simple. About as simple as it gets. The more complex method involves figuring out what VPN software Mullvad really uses, figuring out your keying material, fighting with NetworkManager…
For better or for worse, the widespread methods are not at all similar to the methods sometimes used in Linux. It’s just a fact that most people are accustomed to different ways
They have the .deb at the top of their download page, no need to install the PPA repository if you don’t want. You can’t get any more than “just downloading and double clicking an exe deb” than that on Ubuntu.
I will admit though, I wish there were an easier way to install PPAs.
You got that right. So many contradictory comments for such a simple question.
That said, Linux for home use is a hobby and hobbyists expect a certain level of interest and basic commitment to learning. Also, the Linux community is a bit anti-Windows. So, coming on a Linux forum and complaining that a simple Linux task is too hard, basically because it isn’t Windows and you didn’t bother to read any documentation, pushes ALL the Linux nerd buttons, LOL.
Imagine going on a boardgame forum to complain that some super popular game is dumb because it isn’t like a video game, and too complicated even though you didn’t bother to read the game rules.
As a board game hobbyist, that happens all the time. Our community generally makes an effort to direct them to games with a lower weight and easier rules and encourages them to keep playing to grow the hobby.
usually it’s an appimage, i mistakenly said binary. although there are programs that offer ELF binaries, in that case you can try running it. if it doesn’t run, check the list of runtime dependencies for the program and install what is necessary using your package manager.
They asked how to do it, I wanted to make sure that they knew that an application not existing in the repo doesn’t mean the application isn’t actually available.
Yes. I’m genuinely unsure how it could be any easier. It’s just add the repo and install.
But I suppose it’s a lot if you don’t know what anything means, so I’ll try to explain it at a super basic level. Sorry if this is patronising, I can’t ascertain your experience level so I have to make an assumption.
Hm. Okay so I guess before even deciphering the command, you have to know how Linux works. So on Linux, the first word is the name of the application you want to use, and everything afterwards is stuff that you pass along to the application. It’s up to the application to program in the behaviour for interpreting the words that come after the first word. So “sudo” is the name of the application you’re using, and all that other stuff is stuff you’re telling Linux to tell that other application.
Okay, so what is sudo? sudo is short for Super User Do. It’s an application that does something (sudo) as the super user (sudo). Super User is like admin on Windows. So it’s for when you want to make system level changes or want to override permission limitations. In the past, or at a basic level, you would switch user, make the change, then switch back to your personal user. But with sudo you can borrow the permissions of the super user for the purposes of that one command and everything works smoother that way.
The way you use sudo is you run the application by typing sudo, then you type in a second application and what you want that application to do, then sudo starts that other application and gives it the instructions you asked to be passed on. The second application in this case is curl.
For example, on Windows you might do sudo photoshop open C:userswinuserdocumentsrestrictedfile.psd to open a file in Photoshop that the Windows admin decided you aren’t allowed to open.
Sudo is to get super permissions and doesn’t actually tell you what the command does. The application that is actually being run in this command is curl. curl goes to a url and sees it. So it basically just means download whatever is at this URL. Here the URL is https://repository.mullvad.net/deb/mullvad-keyring.ascAll that other stuff in this command is technically curl specific, so you have to check how curl works to know what it does. But it does follow Linux conventions very closely, therefore a normal Linux user who has never used curl could still guess what it does with 100% accuracy and would probably use it correctly for the first time without checking how to use it. If you want to learn how to use it, you can use the included manual program man, by typing man curl, and as a convention, almost every Linux application will tell you how to use it if you use the -h or --help flags by typing curl -h or curl --help.
In this case, curl takes flags, these are -fsSLo, that’s 5 different flags. A flag is like a mode switch for an application, it’s specified with adding a hyphen and the trigger word. The hyphen is useful because an application like curl might want a file path /usr/share/keyrings/mullvad-keyring.asc and a URL https://repository.mullvad.net/deb/mullvad-keyring.asc, so by adding the hyphen, the application knows that fsSLO is not part of the file path, but is instead specific instructions you’re giving the application. This is a normal convention on Linux, similar to how Windows applications normally program the X button in the corner to close the window.
For curl specifically, by default curl doesn’t save the file, it just displays it in the terminal. So the most basic version of the command would be curl https://repository.mullvad.net/deb/mullvad-keyring.asc and nothing else. Let’s look at what the flags do.
-f is for fail.
-s is for silent. Both of these just change the behaviour of curl to give you less feedback and information. Mullvad probably chose to do this to make it more beginner friendly, ironically.
-S is for show error. There’s a difference between lower and upper case. Show error means that even though curl was asked to be quiet and not show what it’s doing, it should still let you know if there’s an error.
-L is for location, it’s to allow redirects. Mullvad chose to include this option so that the old instructions still work if the URL changes in the future or perhaps if you have a common typo in your command.
-o (output) writes the downloaded file to disk at the specific location. /usr/share/keyrings/mullvad-keyring.asc. The -o flag is the only one in this list that actually matters and changes what the application does. The rest is just there to be beginner friendly, but I think Mullvad made a mistake in including them personally, as I think they add to the confusion instead.
As a standard Linux convention, flags can either be a single hyphen and a letter or two hyphens and a word or a hyphenated sentence. These are conventions and up to the application, but for curl and most applications you’ll use, both work. Similarly, curl and most applications let you use a single hyphen and then all your flags in a row, or separate them with spaces and new starting-hyphens. curl -f --silent -S -L --output file.txt https://lemmy.ml for example.
Okay, so hopefully now you can read it a bit better. Let’s look at it again.
Wtf is that file and why do you need it in that folder? It’s downloading their encryption key to the folder where apt (a different application we haven’t encountered yet) looks for encryption keys. You need this for cryptographic verification. It’s a safety measure, and more important for security software like Mullvad. It’s not mandatory for adding repositories.
So with this command, you borrow the super user’s permissions and you download a file and put it in a folder.
Okay, this one is actually pretty complicated! Similar to above, how they added all those superfluous flags that make curl quieter, this is another case of the mullvad help-article-writers choosing to make the experience of copy/pasting the commands more seamless by sacrificing legibility.
But let’s go through it anyway. It’ll be a super quick crash course in how to use Linux.
Echo is an application that repeats whatever you type at it. If you run echo hi it’ll output hi into the terminal. Deb is an application that installs .deb packages. These are like .msi files on Windows. It’s specific to Ubuntu and certain other Linux distros. The stuff that follows echo is a command. deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/mullvad-keyring.asc arch=$( dpkg --print-architecture )] https://repository.mullvad.net/deb/stable $(lsb_release -cs) main, if you run it on its own, it does something. But because you wrote echo first, it’s only words that are being printed in the terminal. We’ll look at what it’s supposed to do in a minute. After that part, comes a pipe |, this is very important, then a second command. sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mullvad.list.
Okay, we’ll break this down backwards. sudo you already know. It’s just an application that starts another application. In this case tee. tee is an application that takes whatever you give it and writes it to a file. It’s called tee because it’s like a t-split, it both writes to a file and to the terminal at the same time, so you can monitor what’s being written. It’s specifically designed to be used with a pipe.
Wtf is a pipe? A pipe | is a built in Linux function that let’s you take the output from one application and feed it to another. In this case, the stuff you had before the pipe was a echo command. So the output is what you asked echo to echo back to you. deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/mullvad-keyring.asc arch=$( dpkg --print-architecture )] https://repository.mullvad.net/deb/stable $(lsb_release -cs) main". That means that tee is writing this command (without the echo part in front of it, because that’s your command, not the output from an application) into the file located at /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mullvad.list. Tee by default overwrites whatever was already in the file, and in this case, a mode-switch flag wasn’t used to ask it to not do that. So if that file already existed (which it doesn’t), it would now be deleted and replaced with what you echo’d into it. deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/mullvad-keyring.asc arch=$( dpkg --print-architecture )] https://repository.mullvad.net/deb/stable $(lsb_release -cs) main".
What is /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mullvad.list? That’s a file that belongs to apt. apt is your package manager, we’ll loop back to that. The /etc folder is somewhere applications put their files, rather than where the user is supposed to put their files. Having the user’s files separately like that helps with knowing which files you care about when it comes to backups and system migrations and things like that. So inside /etc, apt gets it’s own folder, and inside that folder it created sources.list.d, and inside that folder, you’re now creating a file for mullvad. In this file is the definition of the new repository you’re adding.
So echo just means “repeat what you’re given”. Then deb is the Ubuntu equivalent to msi. Then you’re telling the deb application where to find the encryption key you installed earlier, and you’re telling it which arch (short for architecture, it’s the hardware configuration of your computer) you’re interested in. When it says $ and then stuff in parenthesis like that, that stuff gets computed and substituted. So you’re not literally asking for the architecture $( dpkg --print-architecture ), but instead something like arch=amd64. dpkg is an application that keeps track of what .deb packages you have installed. With the flag --print-architecture, it’s switched to a different mode where instead of it’s primary purpose, it’s telling you what system architecture you’re using. Then it’s the URL for the repository. The URL is also variable, part of the URL will get replaced later. $(lsb_release -cs). lsb stands for linux standard base, and lsb_release is just an application that says which Linux distro you’re using. The reason this ‘standard base’ is used rather than the specific distro and version, is because it’s meant to simplify the very large diversity of Linux distributions and versions down to the minimal number of possible versions that actually have some level of incompatibility with each other. So it would say your specific major version of Ubuntu, but it wouldn’t say exactly which patch you’re on. Someone who’s not using Ubuntu, but using something that from a compatibility standpoint is fully Ubuntu compatible, might also report as a Ubuntu version when using this application. The output from this program is added to the URL. The computed result is something like https://repository.mullvad.net/deb/stable mantic minotaur main. Main just means the main branch of the application, as opposed to a special branch, like a beta-branch.
If you notice, you’re not computing these things first and then putting the result into the file, but instead you’re inserting it with variables. This will allow your system configuration to change without the need to update the repository definition.
All in all, this is a very complicated way to add a repository. On most systems, and indeed on Ubuntu, you can do this with a single application or a flag for the package manager and then a single URL. For Ubuntu it would be apt-add-repository https://repository.mullvad.net/deb/stable mantic minotaur main. But they chose to do it like this to make it easier to do once and forget.
And then finally, what is a repository? What is apt? A repository is a place that hosts software. It’s like the Play store on Android. You can use the Ubuntu repository that is standard for your Linux distribution and guaranteed to work, guaranteed to be safe, guaranteed to be respectful towards you as the user, but you can also add third party repositories. Third party developers can add their applications to the official repository, but doing so means they have to go through a quality assurance step, and that they are limited in the ways they are allowed to abuse you. For security software, this might add too much delay between when it’s critical that they provide an update, and when that update is approved for distribution to Ubuntu users. Instead they have opted to host their application on their own repository.
Apt is your package manager. It keeps track of everything you have installed, every library and component used and required by every application, and for some package managers, every file created by every application. It checks all repositories you’ve specified for updates and automatically updates all your applications. It also deals with requirements and conflicts, ensuring that you don’t have superfluous old libraries taking space, and that when you want to install something with requirements, you don’t need to manually hunt down all the prerequisites. Some package managers available on other systems will even compile applications and deal with build files for you.
A library is a set of application features that doesn’t necessarily belong to a specific application. They do common things and are used my many applications. For a Windows equivalent, you can think of the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable or Direct X.
And that’s everything.
sudo apt update
Sudo is to get super user permissions, and then run the application apt, apt is your package manager, and the command you’re giving to the apt application is to update it’s internal knowledge of available packages and versions. It needs to do this because it didn’t previously have the Mullvad repository.
sudo apt install mullvad-vpn
Sudo is to borrow the super user’s permissions, apt is your package manager, and you’re telling it to install, and then the name of the application you want to install is mullvad-vpn. This final step sudo apt install mullvad-vpn, sudo apt install firefox is how you install applications on Ubuntu typically. Everything before this was because you needed to add a third party source.
Phew, that’s a lot of text! So in hind-sight, it could be easier after all lol. Feel free to ask if you have any questions. It’s a lot of text, but I assure you that if I was going to explain anything about how to use Windows at this level of detail, it would be pages upon pages longer! I hope the explanation wasn’t too condescending. Good luck with learning how to use Linux.
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Pedantic clarifications:
Technically, sudo is a command and not an application, but it’s made to be treated like an application. Also technically it doesn’t stand for superuser do, but all the stuff I told you is assumptions they want you to make to make it easier to use, but because it’s such a core part of Linux, it works differently on a technical level.
| is actually part of bash, not Linux, but most shells have | with identical behaviour.
Yes. I’m genuinely unsure how it could be any easier.
I was gonna laugh, but then you included a lot of information, and thinking back to the days when I would write super long instructions for people with lotsa explaining. This is a good effort to impart knowledge and I commend you for it.
Yes. I’m genuinely unsure how it could be any easier. It’s just add the repo and install.
It can be much easier to install a PPA than using the command line to do so. I think it’s high time it was as easy as clicking on a (verified) “install this repo” type button on a page, and confirming, entering your sudo password from the launchpad website. I’d even be OK with building it into Discover.
Yeah no, generally you just copypaste the software website’s instructions. Many programs can be installed through the app store (or equivalent install commands) but a lot of aoftware you just gotta copypaste the code. Many also just provide an inataller.
The meme about linux software being much easier to install is true in some cases, but mostly bullshit. even if its just sudo apt install vlc you generally still want to check the website to make sure its the best way, or you end ip with an out of date version.
Updating software on linux is better pretty much automatic without annoying popups most of the time though.
Yeah, well, linux is great, but people seem to rarely give the full disclaimer. So people end up disappointed, go back to windows and end up thinking you need to be hackerman to be able to use it. Or they do end up learning everything, think they’re hackerman and tell everyone in the world how linux is just sooo much better and easier because theyve been using it since 1969 or whatever.
My view: Your grandma could comfortably work on linux. It’s when you need stuff beyond the most basic aoftware that there’s a much steeper learning curve than windows. You fuck up, your system implodes. Once you’re balls deep into computers, lets say software development, linux becomes easier and more useful again. Its that middle group of average users who have the hardest time.
This is not the only way to install apps but as a Linux user there will be times when you will need to use the terminal. Might as well know that from now.
The instructions they gave are really simple and straightforward. If you struggle with that, you may want to learn a bit about the terminal.
But since you’re on Ubuntu there is a much easier way: go to Mullvad downloads page and download the deb file. Double click it and the Ubuntu App Store should open and install it. If not, open the App Store and search for gdebi and install it. Now right click the deb you downloaded, and click “open with…” and choose gdebi from the list.
It should check dependencies and give you an “install” button. Click that and wait for it to finish. Then simply launch Mullvad as normal.
In general on Linux you install apps by looking in the distro repo: either by searching the App Store or by using the terminal.
To do it from the terminal type:
‘sudo apt update’. Enter your password.
After it’s updated type 'apt search [name of app] and press enter. It will give you a list of apps with that name. Eg apt search lollypop (a music player). Then if you see it listed, you know it’s in the repo.
To install it type ‘sudo apt install lollypop’ and press enter. It will tell you how large it is and if you want to install it. Type “y” and press enter. It will finish it in a few seconds.
Done. Launch the app as normal.
There is also something called Flatpak’s which you can get from flathub.com You will also find instructions there on how to install flatpak on your system but typing a few commands.
Welcome to Linux. You’ll either embrace and love it or abandon it.
The average Windows user doesn’t know what a terminal is, let alone use it. Whereas in Linux every user knows what a terminal is and has used it at least a handful of times.
Some distros don’t have an app store, just the terminal.
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