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

That should be easily solved with: sudo apt install curl

You have two options: install curl (check @[email protected]’s comment) or do it manually. Installing curl is the easiest.

If you want to do it the hard way (without the terminal), here’s how:

1. Download the file https://repository.mullvad.net/deb/mullvad-keyring.asc from your web browser.
2. Open your file browser as administrator. There’s probably some link for that in the Menu.
3. Move the file that you just downloaded to the directory /usr/share/keyrings/

curl is a good tool to have in general, you can install it with sudo apt install curl

Wow, interesting. You may be able to install curl to fix that like this:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install curl

Can’t hurt to try

sudo apt install curl

sudo apt install curl

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

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.

Is curl so untrusted that you would prefer to use 3 commands (one which still needs root permissions) instead?

Agreed it’s not best practice. But when somebody is saying the individual step-by-step is too complicated, you want to give them the simplest command possible. Even if it is more risky. It’s a trade off of accessibility versus complexity

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.

In this case, to do the exact same as Windows, it literally is just a click.

To auto-update from a repository, it’s a similar deal in Windows.

In this case, they’re the same. Repos are preferred in GNU/Linux and installers in Windows, but both can do both.

Because installing some random app is worse than simply using pre-installed system service.

Both are security audited, but I’d still rather trust OpenVPN.

Because OpenVPN lacks the most important feature of them all - it will not remind you to top up your account balance.

Because they want to lock you into their app and make you think VPNs are complicated so you actually pay for the service.

As I’ve heard it, wireguard is much more secure.

The problem is that for most users, when their setup is completed they won’t need to play with it for a while so after that any time they need to install something new through the terminal it means losing time to find instructions again.

Which is why it’s better to understand what you’re doing than blindly copying pasting. You won’t need to remember these since whatever you want to install if it’s not on the repos you’ll have to google it same as if you were on Windows.

Also on Windows the steps are: Download the install file, double click it, follow the on screen instructions to automatically install the program, then every week or so go back to the website, check if a new version was released, if so download it and install it again. If the configuration would be destroyed by doing this first, make a backup first, if the new version is not backwards compatible for configuration move the existing configuration changes so that you get the new default after install and can apply your changes afterwards.

That’s closer to the truth, and you need to do that weekly for every one of the dozen or hundreds of programs a person has, no wonder people don’t update their programs on Windows and become susceptible to lots of exploits over time.

Also, read my option 1, which is what most websites offer you first, i.e. download a .deb and run it which is the equivalent of Windows, with all of its downsides. For example if you go to that website that OP posted and click on downloads you can select Windows, Mac or Linux, and you can download an installer that way and be done with it. But only Linux has a better option that takes a couple more steps but saves you lots of time in the future.

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.

That’s not at all what happens with Linux.

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.

No, he’s 100% correct

It also fundamentally misunderstands why Linux has such low adoption rates at the desktop. It has much more to do with Windows being ubiquitous in desktop enterprise environments than Linux. MacOS is by all accounts even more intuitive and easier to understand than Windows with a greater selection of native programs than Linux on top of having billions of dollars at their disposal for advertisement, but you’re not exactly seeing MacOS hit >60% of desktops.

Overall, for a thread that’s supposed to help a newbie, this thread has a surprising amount of bad info. From saying Debian doesn’t come with sudo (completely untrue, the Debian installer has an option of adding the user to sudo when most distro installers just add the user to sudo automatically) to saying installing MacOS programs is simply clicking on an icon (not really true either since the only time you’re clicking on shit to install things on MacOS instead of using the store is if you’re installing third-party software, in which case you have to dig through menus).

The random Exe downloads for Windows to update drivers kills me. Users are conditioned to accept it without complaint.

You can verify the signature of the manual download as well. Either way, you are trusting the files you download over HTTPS from mullvad.net. There’s no real difference, except that when you use the repo, you are trusting it indefinitely, whereas if you download the deb directly, you are only trusting it once.

Using the repo is less secure, because it opens you to future attacks against the repo itself.

There’s nothing wrong with installing a .deb manually.

Personally, I’d hesitate to add any third-party repos unless there is a very good reason. In this case, the only real difference is that you won’t get the updates automatically with sudo apt update; sudo apt upgrade without the repo. Either way, the desktop app will notify you when updates are available. There’s very little advantage to using the repo.

Adding a repo is very rarely required. It has deeper consequences than simply installing an app, and requires a higher level of trust. If you don’t understand the security implications of adding a repo (and its associated key), then my advice is: just don’t.

cURL is a very commonly used program to download individual files from the command line and worth installing to have it around in the future.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install curl

The first command tells your package manager to update its list so you ask for the latest version. You can skip it if you’ve already updated today. The second command tells your package manager to install cURL.

This will happen every now and then, especially when building a package from source. You won’t have some common utility that the documentation writer assumed you had, and you will need to find what package provides it and install the package.

The way to solve that problem is to read the commands and look up what they do. The installation method they describe is pretty standard and inoffensive. And provides automatic updates. The commands used aren’t complicated and they’re some of the system fundamentals for Debian/Ubuntu systems so it’s a good idea being familiar with them.

Yes people would assume you have curl. Curl is often used to install programs. And curl is definitely one of the things that can do malicius things this way. So you are right to be hesitant to use commands that you don’t understand. Most Linux users have forgotten how hard it is to learn the first stuff with no preaquired knowledge.

If you have googled “what is curl and how is it used” you may have found some relevant info.

I have given up on Linux because installing was hard in the past

There are some tools that make installing software easier. Like “appimage” files that are single files that (after you make executable) are completely self contained.

Flatpacks and snaps have an “store” like experience.

.deb files are also sometimes simple (also need to be made executable) (depends on the distro)

Unfortunately there is no .exe file experience.

In the time it took you to write this shit post and respond to all the comments you could have spent a couple of minutes reading and educating yourself on the process. It’s legit pretty simple especially if you’re willing to do a little research.

Kids these days i swear.

Doesn’t sound like this sailor is much into reading

“follow an installation wizard” <– I know people just out of uni (having completed BTech), who can’t even do that. Keeping that in mind, I can have way more patience towards OP.

You don’t have to do everything through terminal. You can use synaptic for example. What you have to do is to learn new concepts. If you want to do everything like in windows, use windows.

I don’t know about Mac, but on Windows the Mullvad app doesn’t auto update. If you want to do it Windows style you can look for deb files (which are like installers) or AppImages (which are like standalone executables).

Most pieces of software give terminal instructions for Linux because different people might use different package manager frontends, but literally every Linux user has a terminal. It might seem daunting at first, but giving users commands to run in their terminal is a lot more simple than trying to walk them through repo management through the GUI, or just telling them to figure it out themselves.

I just don’t get why on windows and mac I can download the app from their site, install it and it just works

That’s what the instructions are guiding you to do.

If you hate the terminal then maybe Linux simply isn’t for you? That’s completely okay you know. Use the tool that’s right for you.

Same reason you don’t download installers for your phone, why don’t you think it’s confusing there?

One reason is that different distributions of linux do things slightly different. Would it be better if there was only one linux os? For some devs of third party software, probably, but diversity and freedom to fork software has been good to linux, and no one could decide what everyone else should use anyway.
So, each distribution takes the available software and package it to fit their distro specifics, and those packages go into their repositories. The benefit of using official repositories is that someone has gone through the trouble of making sure it will work on your system safely. There’s accountability and hopefully a bug tracker etc. When you download from a random website you have to trust them instead. Then… you have companies working outside of this model, usually they provide a flatpak or their own third-party repositories. Then you get all these extra steps, but it’s not how most distros prefer to handle software.

I can totally understand why the terminal seems confusing and scary right now, but it’s actually awesome for this kind of stuff because you can just copy and paste commands to do pretty much anything to your computer. Using a GUI often means having a bunch of screenshots that you have to follow manually to do something that a single command can do. Once you’re used to the terminal for these kinds of things GUIs can seem barbaric. Of course it seems scary before you know much about it because it seems like the fucking matrix, and you should only run commands from sources you trust (because they can do anything)… But it’s worth giving a chance, I think.

For this particular instance… often you can just download an application on Linux from a website and run it, but this is almost never the preferred way of doing things. Usually you install applications from your package manager, which is kind of like an App Store (but free), and the advantage of this is that 1) you don’t have to hunt down sketchy executables on the internet, you have a vetted source of safe packages from your distribution, and 2) you can easily update all of your packages. Having a one stop shop for all of your applications (or at least most) is really great, but it can be a little annoying when something you want isn’t in the official repos (like this), though it’s usually a fairly rare occurrence.

On Windows and Mac, you are doing a number of things implicitly that you don’t realize.

When you download from their site, you are expected to verify the integrity and validity of the install file yourself. You also have to take ownership of installing any dependencies yourself.

With the instructions mulvad is providing you, you are connecting to a repo and apt does all that for you.

Some installs don’t require dependencies, but some do. Long term, this style of install tends to be a lot simpler, you just have to learn it.

But more importantly and as others have stated. Linux is different. If you aren’t interested in learning a new workflow, you should stick with something familiar. That’s a choice you should make not because others said it but because you want it.

You can, it’s up to the software vendor to make it simple.

Most of the software are FOSS and can be installed directly from your package manager. That works like the iOS app store/Android Play Store except it existed 10 years before mobile stores.

Google Chrome is an example of proprietary software (so not in distributions repos) that is as easy to install on Linux than Windows. Because Google managed to get a deb that will also update your repos.

Bottom line, most of the time it’s way easier to install software on Linux than Windows (as easy as on iOS) but occasionally it’s slightly more complex.

I don’t understand. If I go to their site at https://mullvad.net the obvious choice to download their software is to click at ‘Downloads’ at the top of the page. It already autodetected I am running Linux and has me on the Linux tab.

Sure there are two download options but the first one says it works on Ubuntu and the second says it works on Fedora. You get a file you can just double click and install. Windows installation works the same way. You download a file and double click it.

You don’t have to use the terminal you don’t really have to know more about sudo than you need about Windows UAC, you don’t have to know what a package or .deb is anymore than what a win32 executable or an Windows’ .msi file is.

People giving you more complicated answers either did not check the website (because they presumed you did) or if they did they think you want more features such as auto-updating which in Windows also requires a more complex install than downloading a file and opening it.

Because it’s an asinine practice from which windows is moving away through winget, and which made the open source community to write a package manager for mac from scratch – homebrew.

And if you think about it for a second, you will realize that it doesn’t exist on Android and iOS at all. E.g. 99% of users only install from a centralized repository called “appstore” and nobody is ever downloading an executable installer.

Basically, you’re uninformed, and blatantly defending your uneducated way of installing software.

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.

I have never regretted time spent reading documentation.