It'd odd that they don't have a Linux version of proton drive.
this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2025
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Cryptpad?
Anybody?
No?
My go-to online suite, but their spreadsheets, documents, and presentations have some big limitations as they use embedded OnlyOffice.
Why are we linking to 3rd party articles with no sources rather than just the horse's mouth?
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Do we like Proton? I never know which VPN company I can truly trust.
They're increasingly divisive I'd say. For me the fact that they rage-quit mastodon after a stint of bad publicity is all I need to know. If they were truly dedicated to a better internet they would be committed to stand up against big tech everywhere, not just wherever there's money to be made from it. I'm migrating away from my proton mail account.
I get my VPN from Surfshark. Not because I necessarily trust them, but because it's cheap and they don't insist on doing anything else than just being my VPN provider. And I trust them more than Proton at this point, anyway.
Don't let me ruin your good time, but my experience with Surf shark:
Used surf shark for about 3 years around pandemic timeframe. Had no complaints (other than it drained my phone battery super fast - didn't test empirically, but seemed somewhat worse than other VPN providers). I was unemployed for a while, so took the opportunity to cut expenses; tried to drop my surf shark subscription. It was a HUGE pain in the butt. I forget the process, but iirc, you had to use their help chat to get the number for cancellations, they kept me on hold for ~10 min, then had a long winded questionnaire ("were required to ask you these questions before proceeding") asking why I was quitting, then made an offer for discounted months before letting me unsubscribe.
Its my understanding regulations have changed such that that's not allowed anymore and also that most VPN can elations are about that bad anyway, but still, wanted to share my experience. Lol, suppose so long as you never quit, you won't have to deal with all that.
do you have a more current preference/recommendation?
I suspect Mullvad would be a popular choice, but it's quite a bit more expensive. As I rarely use VPN (I hardly every do anything where it's necessary), I'm a bit on the stingy side personally.
Yeah, I had a boss once who's favorite saying was:
"You don't always get what you pay for
But you never get what you don't pay for"
Generally with software I will only pay for things that I get full access to without paying for them. I guess I would render your boss somewhat confused.
Well, he took it also to mean payment in the philosophical sense. He was also fond of saying "you can pay with your wallet or you can pay with your clock". He had some extension of that to the effect of its worse when you have to pay with both, but I forget the wording (it didn't flow well).
Not any authoritative recommendations. I'm at most a casual user of VPNs, and so long as I see the traffic getting encrypted, don't think about it much more.
I always hear Mullvad is great for maximizing privacy. Never tried them myself though.
Personally, I use Proton. I was prepping to jump ship earlier this year, but ultimately decided it wasn't worth it. I've had a pretty decent experience with them. The only issue was on on a Linux machine...Uh....and it was minor enough and long ago enough that I don't even remember what it was?
See above for my dissatisfying experience with Surf shark.
I did try to sign up with ExpressVPN many years ago. They're payment portal was busted (tried every day for a week, emailed support with no response).
That about sums up my experience.
Ah, yeah, that sucks. In Europe you can always cancel by just not paying for a subscription, so I've rarely had experiences like this. Only time it happened to me was when I had been stupid enough to have a New York Times subscription (gah) and decided to end it. Huge pain in the ass.
With Surfshark I bought a two-year subscription without automatic renewal, so I get what I paid for and then it's done. But I'm sorry to hear about their bad business practices—it goes well with the overall sleazy look of their website. Hopefully I'll find something better by the time the subscription period is over. :)
Thanks for letting me know! I try to avoid any company that doesn't have open source software as the core of their business strategy, but with VPN that's a bit tricky.
I use Proton because they are no longer a "VPN company". They are slowly rolling out a suite of privacy tools that compete with Google's Workspace (or whatever the hell they're calling it these days).
If you want a "VPN company" I would recommend Mullvad.
If you don’t need port-forwarding, Mullvad is the best choice IMO. Eggs in a basket as well, if you already use other Proton products but don’t want to lock yourself into one vendor for everything.
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Proton Mail has long positioned itself as an apolitical company, dedicated solely to safeguarding user privacy. That’s why many were surprised when [Jan 2025] CEO Andy Yen posted on X (formerly Twitter) that the political landscape in the U.S. had shifted, stating, “10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned.”
This statement quickly went viral, leading to further controversy when Proton’s official Reddit account reinforced Yen’s sentiment. The now-deleted post suggested that Republicans were more inclined to take on Big Tech monopolies than corporate-aligned Democrats. However, within hours, Proton removed all traces of these remarks from its social media platforms.
Proton? No.
Yeah, that mess was quite disappointing. I'm still waiting for them to make a clarifying statement on it. I suppose removing it and just not getting further involved in politics is at least "better" than continuing to double down.
I'm actually hyped for this. A privacy-first alternative to google cloud. I still prefer to self-host all my stuff, but this is WAY more accessable to my less tech-savvy friends
Now all I need is a way to save stuff to my Proton Drive without it needing to sync to a local device...
Privacy first, yes, but who are Proton and can they be trusted? The amount of times they have responded with an immature or unprofessional reaction is too many to believe they are not going to sell or fuck with the data.
Privacy first for the authoritarian mindset is a walled garden, like Apple. They want to prevent anything from connecting or working with stuff because "security" and meanwhile harvest data about you.
Your criticism may be valid (I'm not familiar with any controversy), but if they are as bad as you say, do you have a better alternative?
I just moved from Google, so thus far it has felt like a significant improvement for me.
For cloud storage, Nextcloud is the best open source solution (and, I'd argue, the best solution period). I get it from Murena.io - hetzner.com is much cheaper, but I am happy to support Murena as they develop my phone OS. And I still save a lot every month compared to Dropbox. The instance provided by Murena has great OnlyOffice integration (sharing documents and working together with others works great) and an encrypted drive (vault - similar to what Dropbox used to have) enabled by default.
I use it for syncing files, contacts and calendars, passwords, working on documents together with others (collaborative simultaneous online editing works great with word and markdown, my collaborators only need a link), and really anything you'd expect from a cloud provider. I also it for a secondary e-mail account.
Part of what makes it great, of course, is that you can change service providers with relative ease, including self-hosting. Email is an exception of course, unless you come in with your own domain.
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