The Proton VPN GUI app for Linux has not been popular, with many complaints of bugs and missing features, but Proton promises the new version is much improved.
Their official app for Linux now natively supports all these advanced Proton VPN features, including:
- NetShield Adblocker
- Kill Switch
- VPN Accelerator
- Moderate NAT
- Port forwarding
- Auto-connect at startup
- Pin servers to tray
- OpenVPN DCO (which provides similar performance to WireGuard)
The only snag is that they provide the binary installs for Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora only. This leaves out the Arch distros. There was an AUR package (and a Flatpak) available that wrapped the previous Proton VPN app into an AUR package that an Arch distro could install, but it has not yet been updated.
I see that Proton says they can really only provide support for limited distros, but it probably also highlights the need for creators to support something more cross-platform like Flatpak or AppImage. Flatpak is probably more preferable as it has a package updater, versus AppImage relying on the app itself to do the updating.
I hope the AUR package will be updated soon, but it is less than ideal having something like a VPN app being provided by a 3rd party.
See https://www.howtogeek.com/proton-vpn-linux-app-update-2023/
EDIT 2023-11-07 There is a new 3rd party AUR package called proton-vpn-gtk-app – but I was gettinga build error with it using Manjaro’s Pamac installer -> I clicked on Reset Build Files and then it went through fine, and now running well.