PrivateInternetAccess becomes Linux Mint’s main sponsor

 

I’m happy to announce that PrivateInternetAccess is now the primary sponsor for Linux Mint.

PrivateInternetAccess, PIA, is one of the world’s­ leading VPN providers. The company has been praised for their policy to never log data and for offering some of the lowest subscription prices available. PIA offers 3,180 servers and 16 countries to choose from as well as unlimited bandwidth and up to 5 devices per customer account.

Many of our in-house developers and marketing staff utilize Linux Mint as a desktop.  It is great because everything just works.
We’re big fans of open source and sponsor quite a bit of projects as well as other types of organizations that fight for privacies, civil liberties, etc.  Since some of us were already using Linux Mint, it made sense!

Among other Open Source projects, PIA also sponsors Freenode and GNOME.

We’re proud to welcome PIA as our new sponsor and very grateful for the financial help they’re giving us.

 

98 comments

  1. I was just looking at getting a VPN and PIA was at the top of my list anyway, as soon as I saw this though it convinced me, got it straight away

  2. I find it highly disappointing that they do not support LMDE2.
    Making an inquiry in a chat session this morning I was offered some Beta package and then promptly disconnected.
    Customer service/support SUCKS!

  3. Thats great news and congrats! It will be make Linux Mint stronger and stronger and thats a good job! Well done.

  4. To be fair LMDE2 is kind of bleeding edge : it is based on an OS (debian jessie) that will get released in about a couple of weeks (debian 8.0.0). Though that is debian being somewhat extra-careful and slow with it.

  5. Clem, so does this mean that Linux Mint officially recommends PIA as a reliable VPN, or just accepts their sponsorship monies?

    Edit by Clem: Hi Dale. It means among the many companies selling VPN products, one of them is helping us a lot.

  6. Good deal! Congratulations!

    One thing, however…since they are the main sponsor, does that mean that they can dictate the direction Linux Mint is going, and possibly force Mint to do include things that it otherwise would not? I only ask this question because I’ve seen the discouraging path some other distros have taken after being ‘bought out’ and I don’t want to see Mint go that way…

    Edit by Clem: Hi Will. No, Linux Mint isn’t for sale, nor is any part of its leadership. Funding in general is distinct from design and should not impact it. PIA isn’t trying to take over anything, they’re sponsoring us (i.e. they’re helping us financially and getting recognition and traffic as a result). Please check http://www.linuxmint.com/sponsors.php for more info on this.

  7. Wonderful news. This company help Linux grow. And basically continues the development of Linux I hope more companies will do the same thing for Linux and will continue to give support to the distribution

  8. I very hope that sharing the same sponsor with GNOME will not be a reason for abandoning KDE edition, and its developing will continue.

    Edit by Clem: Hi Menak, we abandoned the LXDE and Fluxbox editions because they didn’t have enough users. That’s the only reason we abandon subprojects.. whether the money comes from donors, sponsors, partners or advertising, our job is the same, to make the maximum number of people happy within our community. That’s our only job. And the best way to do it is to focus our efforts on what people want the most and to be ready to cut what they don’t use much. We look at stats for each edition and the amount of resources we have. We look at projects we’d like to start and try to see where we could find the time. While doing all of this we always take money for granted. YOU as a whole (donors, sponsors, partners, and advertising) take care of the funding so we don’t have to worry about it when we design/develop Linux Mint. The arrival of a new sponsor means we’re even more comfortable than before to allocate time and money into projects. It means we can raise the dev. budget for instance (that was retrospectively done for this entire year). It doesn’t mean anything for GNOME or KDE in particular though.

  9. I’ve been using PIA with Mint for a while now. They go together very well. Makes me feel a little more private in this continuing less private online world.

    Great news PIA will be sponsoring Mint!

  10. I’ve had PIA for 2 months now and it works great. Very fast and service never goes down. They have many servers all over then place so it’s very reliable. I am very happy that they are sponsors for Linux Mint.

  11. 1. I’m happy about every new sponsor.
    2. LMDE: i like it, i use it, it’s stable enough. Cmom its Debian testing a few weeks until the final release. Mint 17.1 seems to make more probs atm. If mint get more good Sponsors, maybe they dont need buntu anylonger. Debian could be a good base.

  12. Excellent distro & excellent VPN; a strangely rational alliance in a crazy world. TF’s annual “Which VPN Services Take Your Anonymity Seriously” article always rates PIA at the top. Perhaps Mint now needs openvpn & network-manager-openvpn installed by default.
    p.s. I’m not really in Romania — thanks PIA!

  13. dale f

    Here is my interpretation of what was stated:

    I’m happy to announce that X is giving me money.
    X advertisement. X has been praised by other people for their policy to not stab their customers in the back for money. X advertisement.

    What more would you expect a business partner to do? Outright endorsement of a fraudulent business partner would be catastrophic for long term sustainability, but a noncommittal bone tossing offers plausible denyability. It is however very unfortunate that it has become common practice for corporations to fill the entire planet with advertisements.

  14. Guys, PIA is a sponsor. That means they are sponsoring the Mint team’s efforts in developing their Linux distro. They don’t own Linux Mint. Linux Mint ain’t a business or a commercial enterprise, so by sponsoring Clem and team they don’t purchase anything, ergo won’t have any say in development decisions … well legally that is. In how far they’re gonna try to influence the Mint devs in any way we gonna wait and see.

    But I ask you this: why should PIA try to change anything about Mint? What kind of interest would any ISP have in the OS their clients are maybe using? The 0.0001 % of their clients on Linux anyway.

    I guess this is a simple and honest sponsorship, nothing more, nothing less. If they had one goal they have already reached it: we, the maybe new clients, are talking about PIA, getting informed, googling them, visting their website, spreading the word. What more could they hope for?

  15. I am glad there are companies out there which support distros like Mint so strongly. All of us benefit. Thank you.

  16. Great news on getting PIA as a sponsor.Private Internet Access has been a great service provider for me. Well worth the money.
    After getting the news that EVERYTHING YOU DO on the net is monitored and recorded… I will not connect to any network without the VPN.
    And as for the sock puppets out there… I’m also a donor. I get NO EXTRA benefits , or control for the contribution. I am grateful that Linux Mint is FREE !!! So I contribute. Now all you Trust Fund Kids and Welfare recipients that get your livings handed to you for FREE can enjoy MINT for free too. No ID or application necessary! Enjoy it!

  17. …let’s all hope they won’t interfere with OS development decisions, and wreck an excellent distro.

  18. Great news, Just joined PIA VPN after researching them, I am just trying to install on mint 17, fingers crossed.

  19. I would like to see an OpenVPN client and if it came with a connect to PIA wizard I’d be fine with that. Thunderbird email knows how to connect to gmail and outlook and yahoo etc…… I just want simple, and reliably….

  20. Regarding my previous post:

    I used the ‘Ubuntu Linux 12.04: OpenVPN via Network Manager Setup’ routine.

  21. It is probably a good service, I may give it a spin.
    But I am still VERY POed about the cruddy service I got with my chat session. (see post #8) I just re read the transcript: double pissed!
    I would Expect ZERO support.

    Maybe I am old fashioned but I would expect a quality company would be reading this blog and reacting to the questions and complaints… The silence is deafening.

  22. I use PIA on my lmde-betsy-laptop and on my Linuxmint17.1-pc. I would recommend PIA to anyone in need of privacy and access to streaming contend blocked by countries.

  23. This is good news for Mint developers and users.

    I use PIA for all my connections since January 2014. Their ‘Ubuntu Linux 12.04’ installation routines work.

    But there is also a PIA Linux app in beta development since November 2013. It can be downloaded only from their forum, here: https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/forum/index.php?p=/discussion/1940/pia-vpn-app-linux-beta. The installer creates an application launcher entry in ~/.local/share/applications as well as an entry in ~/.config/autostart for automatic start/connection on login (this can be controlled through the app). I hope they will finally include a kill-switch as in their Windows, MacOs and Android apps.

  24. Hopefully this move will help prevent you receiving “an offer that you can’t refuse” in order to shut down Linux Mint which now appears to be the only desktop Linux distribution ‘wot works’ in the form of version 17.1 MATE which even performs superbly from a ‘BrucesWay’ USB3key.
    So, my fingers are crossed for you, whilst waiting to see how version 17.2 turns out.

  25. As the result of this announcement, I signed up for PIA VPN. Set was somewhat of a challenge. Perhaps could include standard settings in the distribution. Performance is very good. Better than Comcast.

  26. This is awesome. I love Linux Mint and Private Internet Access. By far the best VPN I’ve used. Nothing is logged by them outside of RAM. Check out startpage.com as well for the world’s most private search engine. Startpage is my goto for everything search.

    Edit by Clem: Startpage is also funding Linux Mint, we’ve got a great relationship with them and they’re another champion of privacy on the Internet.

  27. This is awesome. I love Linux Mint and Private Internet Access. The best VPN service I’ve used. They don’t log anything outside of RAM. Combine these two with startpage.com instead of google. And you’ve got a simple way to protect your basic privacy.

  28. I’ve used PIA for several years now and for the most part it’s been painless. Had no problems at all with 17.1 XFCE 64-bit. It even saved me once when I was trying out different DNS looking for something fast, secure and private. One of the DNS servers I tried using flakes out. I just connected my VPN and had annon access to their DNS servers… probably Google. But at least I could connect back to the web.

  29. @david, post #50.

    Checkout MATE instead of XFCE, it might work for you.

    If you desire LXDE on your Linux Mint machine, its REALLY EASY to do.
    Go to youtube, seach Linux Mint LXDE. A GrahamLinux posted a 12minute video that tells how to convert LM15 Cinnamon into a really nice running Linux Mint LXDE. I did it, really easy and quick.

    Should work equally as well in LM17 or 17.1

    Good Luck and Be Well

  30. Cant access their website in the Uk with virgin as ISP provider. You just get the message:

    “This site has been blocked by Web Safe. It’s listed as having content that’s inappropriate for children, involving either pornography, hate, crime, drugs, violence, hacking, self harm or suicide.”

  31. Excellent news! I’ve been using PIA and finally signed up for the year package (instead of monthly – save some money). PIA and Mint really do work well together…glad to hear the news! 🙂

  32. I love this so much! I cannot even begin to express my pleasure at this happening. I use PIA in my home, and am a huge fan of Linux Mint! This couldn’t be sweeter! I hope this partnership continues for a long, long time! Congratulations!

  33. Most VPNs requires Windows to run their software that would allow Windows to connect on their VPN.

    I wonder if it’s possible to connect to their VPN via Linux Mint. I haven’t tried connecting to any VPN via Linux Mint. It’s just easier to connect from Windows as most of the VPN provider companies creates a program that you run in Windows to connect to their VPN.

    It’s nice that they sponsor Linux Mint.

  34. I find it somewhat odd that a company focused on privacy would make an arrangement with Linux Mint, when Linux Mint doesn’t make full disk encryption a priority. The only reason Mint offers full disk encryption on the main distribution is because Ubuntu includes it. Linux Mint seems to have no intention of adding full disk encryption for LMDE.

    Edit by Clem: True, it’s something we’d like to do eventually but it doesn’t take priority over other tasks we decided to focus on. One of them is home directory encryption, although it’s not as secure as full disk encryption we believe it’s more useful for a majority of our users and thus takes priority over it. We started working on that for LMDE (it didn’t make it in Betsy for this release but we’re hopeful to make it happen in the future). We also worked on this for MDM 2.0, avatar support for encrypted home dirs just landed in on the master branch a few days ago. In Ubuntu we’re also aware of the fact that the password set for full disk encryption is set in QWERTY, that’s another issue we need to focus on at some stage. All in all, and probably like all software projects, there’s a huge amount of things we can improve, we try to do as much as we can, day by day and we give priority to aspects and features used by most people. If the NSA confiscates your computer and looks into it, you probably want full disk encryption to keep them at bay, if your laptop gets stolen chances are it’ll just get wiped but you never know.. the burglar might boot a live ISO and access your data. For most people home dir encryption keeps the vast majority of people at bay and doesn’t cost as much in terms of performance. That’s the rationale we follow to prioritize home dir encryption first. Ideally, you want the installer to provide both options and I hope we’ll get there eventually. We’ve a huge list of things to do on many different aspects of the OS, and that’s just two items.. home dir encryption being further up the list than full disk encryption.

  35. Checkout MATE instead of XFCE, it might work for you.

    If you desire LXDE on your Linux Mint machine, its REALLY EASY to do.
    Go to youtube, seach Linux Mint LXDE. A GrahamLinux posted a 12minute video that tells how to convert LM15 Cinnamon into a really nice running Linux Mint LXDE. I did it, really easy and quick.

    Should work equally as well in LM17 or 17.1

    the thing is don’t want to go that way because it creates a mess of mix programs and errors. i don’t want to go that route.

  36. My preferred and favorite VPN provider sponsoring my preferred and favorite Linux Distro?

    Tis a beautiful day

    Great News!

  37. Great news, Just joined PIA VPN after researching them, I have just installed it on mint 17, I got the beta download from there site. Great online chat and email advice, No prob’s so far.

  38. I’ve been a user with PIA for over a year – they’re great! Good speed, good reliability. I do have the occasional problem of a blacklisted IP Address, but that’s par for the course with VPNs.

    But it’s fantastic they’re going to step up and support Linux Mint! That’s great news!

  39. Does that mean we will see a splash screen offering PIA on the next Mint release?

    Thanks for your good work until now.

    Edit by Clem: No.

  40. Clem,

    First of all, I’d like to congratulate you on getting what is hopefully a good sponsor. I know how much it [vacuums] to try and get work done while staring at the dust-bunnies in your wallet.

    I have admired Mint for a number of years now, and have decided that with Mint, Linux has finally begun to grow up.

    I actually did a couple of write-ups on it on my own blog:
    (http://www.qatechtips.com/search?q=mint)

    Here’s a sample of what I said, and why I like Mint as much as I do:

    It wasn’t full of Canonical’s posturing, arm waving, and experimenting with bizarre new layouts and desktop paradigms every release. It wasn’t trying to monetize the distribution with hard-coded advertisements or forced use of Canonical’s newest features. It wasn’t trying to out-Mac the Mac. It just *worked*, and *it worked very well*. The interface was familiar, uncluttered, and easy to work with, and it was filled with a lot of nice little touches here and there which indicated to me that someone at Mint was actually _*trying to give the user what they needed*_.

    However, this new sponsor scares me.

    Maybe I’m being too cynical, maybe I’ve been too jaded after all these years, but a “big wallet” sponsor scares me. Ubuntu was supposed to be immune to Canonical, Fedora was supposed to be immune to Red Hat, but both of them have “big brother” looking over their shoulders now, and it shows.

    In fact, one of the things that ultimately led me to standardize on Mint was the fact that I got heartily tired of Fedora/Red Hat telling me what I could, and could not do with my own installations. So, I went with Ubuntu because Ubuntu was, (and I do mean *was*), “all about choices”. Now Canonical has its hands so deep in Ubuntu’s dev process that it may never get out again and all the Ubuntu fan-boys are complaining that users want them to “dumb down Ubuntu”. Once that happened, I was looking for somewhere to go, and Mint was there, waiting with open arms.

    So far, Mint has been able to steer clear of all that posturing and arm-waving, and it has, (so far), spent the vast majority of it’s dev time and budget trying to get things right. And no, you can’t give everyone what they want all the time. But you *DO* try to give us a distribution that we can honestly call our own.

    And yes, I have tossed you folks a few centavos here and there when I could, and I am glad to do so. I also know that it takes more than “a few centavos here and there” to support the kind of development effort that it takes to get – and keep – a distribution like Mint off the ground. So, I understand the need for a major sponsor. You folks can breathe a bit easier and concentrate on what you really want to do instead of going around with hat-in-hand.

    But, it still scares me.

    I hope and I pray that my misgivings are wrong. Time will tell.

    What say ye?

    Jim (JR)

    Edit by Clem: Hi Jim, Linux Mint is owned privately by myself and it is not for sale. What PIA is doing here is sponsoring us, not investing in us. We’re not a public company, we don’t share ownership or decision-making. If you enjoy what we do, this is good news.. because it doesn’t mean we’ve got less power over Mint than before, quite the opposite, we still (and always will) have 100% ownership of it, but we’re now playing with a bigger budget.

  41. Can we expect discounts from there service?

    I understand they are donating money to the development team, but my concern is what are they getting out of it?

    Thanks!

    Still the best Linux Distro! We use it JMU were I am getting ready to graduate!

  42. UGH typo above!

    Still the best Linux Distro! We use it JMU were I am getting ready to graduate!

    Should be:

    Still the best Linux Distro! We use it JMU where I am getting ready to graduate!

  43. Yay! Signed up for PIA just now and THEN discovered they’re sponsoring my favourite distro! An excellent day all round.

    (And their beta app for Linux works just fine with Mint 17.1)

  44. Funny how how your sponsers colour scheme matches mint…
    I joined up with PIA a few weeks ago due to incoming metadata laws.

    Hopefully we will see some newbie friendly vpn client setup for PIA in mint. Or PIA intergrated out of a default install?

    Maybe PIA should offer a mint linux setup guide?

  45. Congrats to Clem & team on obtaining a major sponsor. I am signed up to PureVPN as they had a “Connect Using Linux Mint” page on their website, but will look at changing to PIA when my subscription expires.

  46. Above I see only positive reactions about PIA, but no-one realizes, it’s an american business. They say, they won’t log connections, but one national security letter from the nsa and you’re hooked ! And they are not allowed to tell/inform you.
    What about that?

  47. I am SO happy to see this!
    I have been using PIA for more than 6 months now and I love it!
    The Ubuntu version has worked flawlessly on Mint!
    Mint is my favorite Distro, and PIA is super affordable!
    And now I can rest assured that PIA will remain compatible.
    Excellent because I avoid using the internet without a VPN.
    🙂

  48. Now that PIA is the Primary sponsor, maybe we can get some updated solid installation support for Mint????? I’m a Linux amateur and I’m tired of fumbling with PIA. I’ve been VERY happy with it in Windows.

  49. In other Distro’s like Manjaro, OpenVpn is all ready loaded. Does this mean that Linux Mint will pre-install OpenVPN and Network Manager framework with gnome plug-in in future builds ???
    I have been using PIA for about 6-7 months now and love everything about it. Works well on Mint, Manjaro, Linux Lite, and even Windows 7.
    PIA price is very reasonable and many servers to choose from. I like being able to use Iplayer just by connecting a UK server. PIA helps make my internet experience better and safe. What a wonderful product.
    Sincerely, Richard

  50. Doesn`t a vpn slow down your connection? If you have a slow (2.5Mbps) connection, like myself, it would probably slow it down to a crawl.

  51. tony@85

    a VPN tunnel has no impact on the pipeline itself. in other words, if you have a 2.5Mbps pipe, you will still have that same pipe with a VPN tunnel. however, the establishment of the VPN tunnel does take up some bandwidth, thereby reducing what is available to other network traffic. again, this does not change the “size” of the pipe.

    that said, i have a whopping 1.5Mbps pipe, and use VPN quite frequently, but i am able to continue with other web browsing just fine on other devices not connected via VPN. of course, this is all relative to the activity you are pushing through the VPN tunnel and other web based activities not associated with the tunnel.

    truthfully, there are way too many factors to really determine what impact a given type of traffic may have on a pipe. if i had to guess, i would say the traffic establishing and maintaining the VPN tunnel itself is tiny. but that’s a guess, and not necessarily educated. if i’m wrong, i’m wrong. but i’ve been wrong before. i’m okay, as long as i’m willing to be corrected, and to learn from it.

  52. @ PB,
    Thanks for that explanation, seems like I`ve been misinformed a bit. My 2.5Mbps is on a good day with a following wind & not too many others clogging up the “pipe”.
    Nice explanation by the way.

  53. @Orca Flotta

    You are an idiot. ISP’s doe care what OS you use so they can sell you informaton. Look at Windows 7, I tried it at the local libary in a VM and with in 5 min the ISP was showing me local ads. Look at the UK where the ISP block porn with their routers and if you sign in you are added to a black list by the ISP’s. ISP’s do care and they want their customers to use Windows so they and the NSA can steal your data. Look at EA they have been found guilty of stealing Windows users tax info with their virus Origen! ISP’s do care becasue most are evil, greedy, ass wholes. Look at comcast, verison, time warner, cox, mediacom. All of them have an agenda. Comcast has threant customers who use VPN’s or the TOR network. They have corrupted our goverment and now most states can’t even set up their pwn networks if they wanted to. I am glad that Mint got another sponser and the fact the PIA is using Mint should be a good thing and provide more moeny for Clem and his team to work with. It is good to seem more companys give back to the linux distros they use.

    @Clem,

    Congradulations on the new sponser and keep up the good work.

  54. tony@86

    well, you may not necessarily have been misinformed. truth is, we tend to over simplify things from one aspect, and complicate things on another. this can make it very difficult to truly explain to another person what is happening under a given set of circumstances. to you and i, we plug in a modem, connect the computer to it, and away we go, we have internet. but to truly explain what is actually taking place out there is virtually impossible. each of us is left thinking one thing is true, when actually something else is. i suppose you could boil it down to the old saying: nothing is as it seems. so don’t feel bad for yourself, or for those who have explained things to you. after all, my explanation is no where close to hitting the nail on the head.

  55. i cannot believe 90 of you have nothing better to do than sit around and wait for a VPN company to sponsor a Linux Distro so you can jib-jab on the interwebs. Seriously – it’s pathietic. Yes, you could say that i am guilty of the same, but only before i inform that yes i am the governor of the internet here in the Northern Hemisphere and i am, in fact, obligated to be here helping the simple folk not argue about stupid privacy concerns and be condescending to others as if you have ANY idea whether your ISP scrutinized their customers ENTIRELY based on their operating system type. It doesnt matter than you are likely right, or possibly wrong, the important thing happening here is YOU ARE number 8o-something in a long, long, line of people that could literally be robots. Your mental health is what I, as your governor, find myself most concerned with here today. So – walk around, stretch your legs.. and if you find yourself back in some blog, arguing with some other mentally challenged person about privacy and ISP spying and such, I want you to stop, drop, and roll … or better yet, buy a whistle – and ANYtime you do ANYthing stupid, i want you to blow that whistle until you realize that you actually not smart, you dont know shit about privacy, ISPs, VPNs,or any of that – you just got real paranoid because you downlaoded enough lame movies last year to jeaporadize your entire families livlihood – this does not make you a privacy activist, it does not make you part of anonymous – it makes you a carnival barker that clearly doesnt know much, barking at a carnival that you think to be frequented by other like-minded people, but you cannot see that the other people are actually tiny-minded robots that just utter perfectly entropic but slightly relevant words to keep the illusion of a conversation until some self-righteous ass hat starts yappin about privacy and big brother and takes the attention off of the dumb robot – you see, it’s just a bunch of robots trying to get you to feel confident and contribute genuine human, although ass-hattish, content

    … ok remember your whistle, and stop hanging around in these places like a angry privacy shark waiting for some less paranoid fishy whose narcissistic delusions are not *quite as mature to swim by – please consider, that person might not know, care, about vpns or net neutrality – they might just be some fat lady in China that gets paid to comment in blogs about wounding-duck tech companies, like me…

    you will refer to me as governor, guv’na, or ‘your honor’. stop the dooshbagelry. whistle.

  56. I am looking forward to the regular updates to their Linux app which has for so long been neglected in favour of their windows/mac/android apps.

    I wonder if it will actually work on XFCE,KDE,Cinammon and XFCE?

  57. Sharing the same sponsor with GNOME PIA could put pressure on the Mint team to abandon Mate or Xfce down the road. Can you really tell us that IF a major donor threatens to pull out you will let them walk? This is very discouraging to me and some others.

    Edit by Clem: Hi Bill, yes I absolutely can. First, we don’t rely on any single source of income. Second, funding does not control design.. quite the opposite, funding is there so we can design without worrying about commercial aspects. Donors and sponsors alike aren’t granted any special privileges when it comes to design or decision-making. I think you’re confused maybe because of the way Fedora or Ubuntu work and the relationship they have with their corporate backers/owners (RedHat, Canonical). Linux Mint works very differently in this regard. This is a sponsorship, not an investment. Neither PIA, nor any sponsors or any donors participate in the design, the ownership or the decision-making of our project. It can happen, in the scope of a partnership that some requests are made. If the requests conflict with our own goals we simply refuse and as you say “let them walk”. That was the case for instance with Google and Ask.com. We’re very comfortable with our funding. Remember this project started as a hobby Bill… money is an important aspect of it because the more of it we have the greater things we can achieve, but it doesn’t change our goals though. If we let funding restrict our freedom and empowerment when designing Mint, we’d totally miss the point and funding would defeat its own purpose. I hope that helps with your question.. it’s hard to answer it because you’re miles away from our mindset here, I was surprised some people thought we could “sell out” ownership or decision-making, and even from PIA’s point of view.. they’re here for two reasons, to help because they like what we do, and to generate more sales because people who like us will like them more for helping us (you can already see it in the comments, there’s a positive echo to this sponsorship).

  58. james @88
    two years in Beta? are your kidding? it is high time for PIA to get serious about offering their services.
    I am more than willing to give it a shot, 24 hour FREE trial would be enough… But they will not get a single nickel from me until they offer support. (see my #8 post)

  59. Clem: thank you for such a clear, concise, answer to my #92 questions and fears. I have come to enjoy Mint so much these past 3 years well, I’ll get down off my soapbox now and go make another donation to you. Thanks for caring.

    Bill in NC – USA

  60. I signed up for PIA, after following the “Linux CLI Setup” I could not figure out how to use it.

    here is my support chat with them-

    Me- i followed the Linux CLI setup, How do I use my VPN now? I signed up because of the announcement on linuxmint. I am running LinuxMint 17.1

    Live Support An agent will be with you shortly. After your live chat session, you will have the option to rate your experience. If you would like, there are answers to common questions available at https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/pages/contact-us

    Brendon T- Hi Jason, this is Brendon T

    Me- Hello

    Brendon T- For more information on our Linux Beta client, and a link to the download for the client, please check out this post in our forums:

    https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/forum/index.php?p=/discussion/1940/pia-vpn-app-linux-beta

    Brendon T- That said, the CLI setup may be able to work on Mint, but it is not supported as such.

    Me- oh great now i need to cancel this service if it is not officially supported then.

    Brendon T- We do offer our client for use on Mint. The other setups on our website, such as CLI, we re specifically designed for Ubuntu 10 and 12.

    Me- ubuntu 10 & 12 are at end of life/support
    Can you point me to the LinuxMint client please

    Brendon T- https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/forum/index.php?p=/discussion/1940/pia-vpn-app-linux-beta

    Me- OK i will give it a try. Thank you. If i have any issues I will ask for assistance.
    Brendon T- Certainly. You’re most welcome.
    Have a Great day.
    *********The chat went well, lets see if it works…….tar.gz ? install.sh?? OH, following directions next.

    From the terminal in the directory you downloaded to:

    1) Extract file:
    tar -xvf installer_linux.tar.gz

    2) Tell OS to proceed:
    chmod +x installer_linux.sh

    3) Run installer:
    ./installer_linux.sh

    Does it work—> yes YES yes Yes

    That was my experience. I hope that helps someone.

  61. Yay! Now I feel even better about resubscribing to their service.

    (Wish I could give more, Clem.. -_-;)

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