![]() ![]() Anyway, after logging in, I just have to manually connect once, then it works.Īs for the next requirement, I’ve given up. Each time I boot my computer, I’m greeted with a Connection Failed notification on the login screen. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work at all the first time your computer connects to the internet after it’s booted. So we should improve that in gnome-control-center. There is no GUI configuration option for this in gnome-control-center, but I eventually found it in nm-connection-editor: you have to edit your normal non-VPN connection, which has a preference to select a VPN to connect to automatically. The first requirement was hard to solve, and I still don’t have it working perfectly. ![]() NetworkManager must reconnect to the VPN service if connection drops, and must never send any data if the VPN is off.NetworkManager must autoconnect to the VPN, so I don’t have to do it manually.Now, I have two main requirements to ensure that Charter can’t keep records of the websites I’m visiting: So my claim that it only works on Ubuntu is outdated.) But anyway, once you get it configured properly with NetworkManager, it works: no need to install anything (besides the OpenVPN certificate, of course). ( Update: After publishing this post, I discovered this article. Seems the installation script now supports for Fedora/RHEL and Arch Linux. PIA should ditch the pointless desktop app and improve its documentation for configuring OpenVPN via NetworkManager. So there is some room for improvement here. There are many third-party resources for how to configure PIA on Linux, which you might think is good but actually indicates a problem with the official documentation in my opinion. I wound up following instructions on some third-party website, which I have long since forgotten. Private Internet Access provides an Ubuntu app, but I’m going to ignore that because (a) I use Fedora, not Ubuntu, and (b) why on Earth would you want a separate desktop app for your VPN when OpenVPN integration is already built-in on Ubuntu and all modern Linux desktops? Unfortunately the documentation provided by Private Internet Access is not really sufficient - they have a script to set it up automatically, but it’s really designed for Ubuntu and doesn’t work on Fedora - so configuration was slightly challenging. If you need real anonymity, you absolutely must use the Tor Browser Bundle, but that’s going to make your life harder, and I don’t want my life to be harder, so I’ll stick with a VPN. But my adversary is going to be Charter Communications, so a VPN is the perfect solution for me. A VPN service provides excellent anonymity against your ISP, but relying on a VPN would be a pretty bad idea if your adversary is the government (it can perform a traffic correlation attack) or advertising companies (they know your screen resolution, the performance characteristics of your graphics card, and until recently the rate your battery drains…). Unfortunately some of the claims on the website seem to be - arguably - borderline deceptive. It makes it easy to buy or discontinue service, so there are no pricing surprises, and there’s a pretty good library of support documentation. Anyway, this is a pretty reasonable price that I’m happy to pay. That’s actually good: it means I’m the customer, not the product. Cost is $40 per year if you pay a year in advance, but you should probably start with the $7/month plan until you’re sure you’re happy with the service and will be keeping it long-term. This will be a short review of my experience. ![]() The natural solution is to use a VPN, and the natural first choice is Private Internet Access, since it’s a huge financial supporter of GNOME, and I haven’t heard anybody complain about problems with using it. I’m soon going to be moving to Charter Communications territory, but I don’t trust Charter and don’t want it to keep records of all the websites that I visit. ![]()
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