this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2024
164 points (81.8% liked)
Linux
49430 readers
546 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
In general, yes.
Your system has repositories with packages on its own, but on Ubuntu they're rarely up to date (which is ok, Ubuntu has older, well tested versions).
So what this guide does is it installs a custom repository which contains the Mullvad VPN packages (and some additional stuff needed to make it work, like the signing key for the packages). After you install the repository you can install the packages the way you're used to (apt, software center).
This has some security implications. The default repository is well tested and checked for malware and so on. By adding 3rd party repositories you lower the security because now the system can install from other, less tested sources (and it can, for example, create a package with the same name as some system library and with newer version - ensuring their version is installed because it's newer). It doesn't mean that using 3rd party repositories is bad, in fact I'd do the same if I had Ubuntu and wanted to install Mullvad, it just means that you should really check whether you trust whoever created the repository.
The reason why they're doing this instead of just giving you a .deb file to double click is updates - if you add their repository, the next time you update packages (through apt or update center), you'll update Mullvad as well, ensuring you're on the latest version. Because of that mechanism, software rarely contains code to check for new versions - on Windows you'd get some notification that a new version is available, here you'll get nothing because auto update through repositories is assumed (or it's executed automatically like for example Firefox does).
Someone already provided instructions on how to download the .deb file, so you can go that route, but IMO the better way is installing the repository (if you trust Mullvad).
Step by step
sudo curl -fsSLo /usr/share/keyrings/mullvad-keyring.asc https://repository.mullvad.net/deb/mullvad-keyring.asc- downloads their repository signing key into/usr/share/keyrings/mullvad-keyring.ascecho "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/mullvad-keyring.asc arch=$( dpkg --print-architecture )] https://repository.mullvad.net/deb/stable $(lsb_release -cs) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mullvad.list- creates a new file with the repository configuration in a location that apt expectssudo apt update- after adding a repository, this command will download the information about all packages, versions and file locations so thatapt installknows of their existencesudo apt install mullvad-vpn- installs the Mullvad VPN itselfHopefully I've cleared up things a bit, feel free to ask if something's unclear!