• Telorand@reddthat.com
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    18
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    3 months ago

    I wouldn’t say it’s “better,” but merely different. Until immutable distros can easily solve installing certain software that requires system-level access (like VPN clients without a Linux package or repo), there will always be a place for mutable distros.

    And I say that as a proponent of distros like NixOS, Bazzite, and blendOS.

      • Telorand@reddthat.com
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        3 months ago

        Yep, and it’s one of the only VPNs with a flatpak. It works great when the software can be easily layered. Meanwhile, Private Internet Access comes as a .run executable tarball.

        • asap@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          3 months ago

          Until immutable distros can easily solve installing certain software

          So… it’s easily solved then?

          • Telorand@reddthat.com
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            3 months ago

            Not currently. Unless you have a good guide on how to build a flatpak that has more examples than launching a “Hello world” bash script.

    • Vilian@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      3 months ago

      You can do that with fedora Atomic tho, just enable it, also why install a VPN? Why you can’t use OpenVPN?

      • Telorand@reddthat.com
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        3 months ago

        I can, actually, but I’d rather use WireGuard for the improved throughput. There’s no “enabling” Private Internet Access’s client, though, because it’s a self-executing tarball and install script, and that’s the only way to access their WG endpoints.

        They have a manual connection client through the command line, but that hasn’t been updated in over two years, and I don’t feel comfortable using it.

    • Vincent@feddit.nl
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      3 months ago

      I haven’t used it myself, but from what I’ve read VanillaOS has that covered pretty well with APX?

      • Telorand@reddthat.com
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        3 months ago

        I haven’t really looked at that one, so I’ll have to take a look and see what it can do (and what its limitations are). I saw that it containerizes software by default, and something like VPN software can’t usually run in a simple container, since it usually tries to manage network connections, and would need unique permissions.

        • Vincent@feddit.nl
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          3 months ago

          AFAIK it’s based on Distrobox, which allows you to work in containers with access to key host services that you need, which I think should be sufficient for a VPN.

          (In fact, for VPNs specifically Flatpaks are sufficient as well - I’m using Mozilla VPN via a Flatpak.)

          • Telorand@reddthat.com
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            3 months ago

            Private Internet Access doesn’t come as a flatpak, deb, or rpm, unfortunately. I’d have to build my own and come up with a way to automatically build it so I don’t have to manually do it each time PIA releases a new update.

            Podman containers via distrobox don’t work well for PIA, for whatever reason, so if I decide to pursue that, I’ll likely have to learn podman. I’m currently trying to install PIA during the build process of a custom uBlue image, and that has its own challenges.

            Basically, PIA is making me consider switching to another provider just to be done with it. 😅