desktop VS mullvadvpn-app

I'm satisfied with the transparency Mullvad has shown by publishing its 9 audits.[1] I also appreciate how Mullvad releases up-to-date source code for all of its software clients, which I consider a bare minimum for any VPN to even be considered.[2]

Private Internet Access, on the other hand, does not release up-to-date source code for its software clients:

- PIA Android client: latest source release v3.14.0 (Mar 18, 2022) vs. latest Google Play release v3.18.0 (Feb 22, 2023)[3]

- PIA iOS client: latest source release v3.14.0 (Mar 18, 2022) vs. latest App Store release v3.20.0 (Mar 1, 2023)[4]

- PIA desktop client: latest source release v3.3.0 (Feb 23, 2022) / v3.4.1-beta1 (Aug 18, 2022) vs. latest downloadable release v3.3.1 (unknown)[5]

- PIA browser extension: latest source release v3.1.0 (May 31, 2021) vs. latest Chrome Web Store release v3.2.0 (March 8, 2022)[6]

It's not clear to me how much of a say you still have in PIA's operations, but if you have any influence, I kindly ask you to direct them to release the source code of PIA's clients on time, every time a new client version is released. Having open source clients was the PIA's last claim to credibility after PIA was acquired by the former adware/malware distributor Kape Technologies.[7]

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[1] Mullvad's audits: https://mullvad.net/en/blog/tag/audits/

[2] Mullvad's GitHub repos: https://github.com/mullvad

[3] PIA Android client - GitHub: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.privateint... / Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.privateint...

[4] PIA iOS client - GitHub: https://github.com/pia-foss/vpn-ios/tags / App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vpn-by-private-internet-access...

[5] PIA desktop client - GitHub: https://github.com/pia-foss/desktop/releases / PIA website: https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/download/linux-vpn

[6] PIA browser extension - GitHub: https://github.com/pia-foss/extension-chrome/releases / Chrome Web Store: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/private-internet-a...

[7] HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21612488

In case it matters I'm planning to have a go at building this: https://github.com/pia-foss/desktop

Why is the latest version 3.3.1 Desktop app source no longer available on Github? Only compiled binary packages are linked along with their signatures on PIA site...

Their software is open source. There is certainly the possibility that they are logging what sites you are visiting, but as I understand it they have shown in court multiple times that it is not the case. This does certainly shake my trust in them though. Recommended alternative that doesn't log and supports a gigabit connection?

Looking for this?

I am building my home server on Raspberry Pi 4 B with Ubuntu 21.04. However, there's no installer for arm64 devices (the installer on the website only supports x86_64). Therefore I am going to build from the source here.

If you want a VPN that works on Linux, choose one that uses standard protocols such as PIA which offers native clients as well as shell scripts (although I wrote my own)

* Mozilla VPN: wrapper around https://mullvad.net/ (and had security issues: https://www.techradar.com/news/security-audit-finds-major-is...)

hey there, after doing some research it seems like the conclusion is your vpn. Nord VPN has a lack of port forwarding, while other vpns have port forwarding (proton, mullvad). that is most likely interrupting your speed. also, apparently nord does keep some sort of logs if your interested in that. i would recommend cancelling nord and getting something else like proton or mullvad (i would recommend proton more) if you really want to download movies/shows. another option for you (if you dont want to switch) is to find your movie on websites that don't require a vpn (aka not torrenting) but you can if you want to. you can use this for that, they have tons of movies and shows. or just use a streaming site off of the megathread.

The 500 MiB thing is because the frontend is an Electron app. That's sadly how it is with Electron. The UI can of course be re-written into a language/framework that produces way smaller programs, but it's not currently really worth the tradeoff. Most people are not that constrained in disk or internet speeds. https://github.com/mullvad/mullvadvpn-app/issues/1572

The downloads folder access thing is because Apple made it so. If you run an installer from the downloads folder it will need access to the downloads folder. This has nothing to do with Mullvad, but is a permission check macOS puts on all software. The Mullvad VPN app has no code for doing anything in the Downloads folder specifically.

Requiring an account for search is a deal breaker. They say they need it for payment, but mullvad[0] does just fine without an account as well.

[0]: https://mullvad.net/

From this post: https://github.com/mullvad/mullvadvpn-app/issues/1570

I don't understand why the .rpm package of Mullvad VPN still only officially supports Fedora. This issue on GitHub has been open for almost three years now and there is even someone else trying to help you making the necessary changes to support openSUSE in this PR. I kinda agree with cornfeedhobo's sentiment that the necessary changes to make it work on openSUSE are being gated. I'm a paying user for quite some years already and made the switch to openSUSE and I'd really like to continue using Mullvad VPN there without having to force install the .rpm package and thus living with a lot of uncertainty about how well it will run.

It's just a false-positive. If you're still wary, feel free to review the source code of the app and you can even build it yourself: https://github.com/mullvad/mullvadvpn-app/