Hello. I am currently using AirVPN however I am considering changing providers. One of the reasons is that eddie-ui is on the AUR repo and I have read that I should stay away from AUR.
I have looked at ProtonVPN, which is also in AUR as well as Mullvad.
Are there any GUI VPNs in the official repository? I have seen OpenVPN in the Network Manager however the information required is something that I think I might not be able to obtain.
I am on Manjaro XFCE.
How come? Your keyboard doesn’t work in search bars?
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/OpenVPN
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/WireGuard
qopenvpn is a GUI for openvpn.
sudo pacman -S qopenvpn
qopenvpn is qt-based, but that won’t prevent you from using it in XFCE. You can use qt5ct to tweak its appearance.
Who ever said this crap could also say: “and in Windows 10 you should stay away from .exe files…”
The point is, that im also use AirVPN (eddie) and AUR running fine for me since years.
Without any problems at all.
Is it recommend to prefer Official Repo or Flatpak? YES
Does it mean you should stay away from AUR? NO
The point is, try to use less AUR stuff, when possible… doesnt mean you have to evade it on all cost.
It’s not that you should stay away from the AUR, just that you should be aware of the disclaimer and that there is no official support. Installing loads of random packages from the AUR without knowing what you’re doing is a good way to break your system.
DISCLAIMER: AUR packages are user produced content. Any use of the provided files is at your own risk.
Having said that, there are many good packages on the AUR from reputable vendors. I use AirVPN and I use the eddie-ui client from the AUR and it works very well indeed.
Yes. Manjaro GmbH & Co KG has a partnership with Surfshark. There’s more info on manjaro.org. I’ve never used it myself.
FYI, I maintain all the Mullvad VPN packages in the AUR.
However, I am currently using AirVPN for reasons and use my own PKGBUILD for eddie-ui for other reasons. No, a GUI using Mono isn’t the best. I’m also testing the ProtonVPN beta written in Python.
No, I’m not going to add any of the aforementioned applications to the Manjaro repos, so don’t get any ideas.
It does, however I did not realise to search for those wikis.
I did see qopenvpn in the official repo, however I searched for pictures beforehand to see the UI and could find nothing.
I have used eddie-ui for years and have no problem with it.
I am starting to use it less as nomacs was playing up for me. It had installed and worked in the past, now there are times installing it is a pain as at any point, installation will stop. I have now switched over to gThumb.
Blockquote Installing loads of random packages from the AUR without knowing what you’re doing is a good way to break your system.
I found that out the hard way.
Will AirVPN ever be classed in the official repo? This way, I can stop using AUR until I need it.
survey says
SurfShark 
interesting. I will take a look. Thank you.
I wasn’t going to request for you to add them to the official repo. Only, you can make that decision.
I only mentioned it because it answers your question. I only relayed information that is quite prominent on manjaro.org.
FYI, I am a member of the community, not the company. I neither recommend nor endorse anything that may be promoted on our website by the company.
…but then you did:
Let’s make the difference between software and commercial service providers. There is software in the repos, like openvpn.
But i also noticed popular paid services/providers like the above mentioned missing. I suppose it is a mix of not being entirely opensource and not being wanted there from the service providers. If they wanted to, they could have reached arch and published the source on gitlab, and maintained the package. But many commercial providers want to have full controll of the code and not make it public, and in such cases there is no way (legal or technical) to make a sensible package that is good supported. And half working things have no place in the repos.
Some examples of such not really linux friendly companies are Viber (Aur-Appimage), Teamviewer, Anydesk (zipped binary code provided from the website)
Mullvad in the aur is maintained by one of the manjaro team. So if you trust manjaro his aur package is just as trustworthy
You mean all these ones? 
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages?O=0&SeB=M&K=yochananmarqos&SB=n&SO=a&PP=250&submit=Go
When selecting a VPN provider I always first look, if they offer native openvpn/wireguard connections and have respective documentation. Even when you decide to use a proprietary application later (e.g. on manjaro itself, but also their android/ios app), the native doc is a good indication what sort of service they run.
The regular configuration/start of an openvpn-client@.service or wg-quick@.service is very easy nowadays. For example, the openvpn package drops privileges automatically. If your provider has pre-configured profiles, it is even easier.
Regarding wireguard one point to keep in mind is to look for specific log statements of the provider. I’m not a mullvad user, but considered them and read about their specific related configuration - something that can be used as a guidance when making choices.
I was referring to Mullvad when I said I wasn’t going to request it, unless you are one of AirVPN’s shadow developers.
so if I understand well… your pkgbuild is without mono?
and since I’m not a geek, how to install? just copying it in konsole?
generally I download the latest testing and install it with pacman -U because is not in AUR immediately after release
FYI, most packages in the Manjaro repos are inherited from Arch. The rest are maintained by Manjaro. All packages are built by a Package Maintainer like myself, not an upstream developer. We decide what packages to include in the repos.
You can see who built the package by checking the Packager field; i.e, firefox is packaged by an Arch Package Maintainer:
❯ pacman -Si firefox | grep Packager
Packager : Jan Alexander Steffens (heftig) <heftig@archlinux.org>
surfshark-gui-bin is packaged by a Manjaro Package Maintainer:
❯ pacman -Si surfshark-gui-bin | grep Packager
Packager : Mark Wagie <mark@manjaro.org>
No. I was just saying that I didn’t find the Eddie UI Mono GUI optimal. I’d rather use something native like Gtk or Qt. My PKGBUILD uses msbuild with .NET Framework 4.8 instead of xbuild with 4.5 as the latter is deprecated.
Build it manually like you would any other AUR package.
If you’d rather only checkout the eddie-ui folder than clone my entire pkgbuilds repo:
git clone -n --depth=1 --filter=tree:0 https://github.com/yochananmarqos/pkgbuilds
cd pkgbuilds
git sparse-checkout set --no-cone eddie-ui
git checkout