Motivation

I recently decided to try a new VPN (Windscribe), however, they did not have support for Arch Linux, fortunately, they offered OpenVPN, IKEv2 and WireGuard configuration files. I have always used OpenVPN but decided to try WireGuard, a fairly new protocol that promises to be simpler, more secure, and faster than the alternatives. All the guides I found were about setting up a home VPN server with WireGuard, however, connecting to a VPN provider is much simpler. I write this as a reference note in case I have to set it up again, and if I can help someone else, all the better.

Wireguard installation

The official installation page has the instructions on how to download it in many operating systems. In my case, it is: sudo pacman -S wireguard-tools.

Connecting to a VPN

After getting the WireGuard configuration files from the Windscribe website, we will have to move this file to /etc/wireguard and probably rename it because the maximum length of a Linux interface name is 15 characters, for example: sudo mv Windscribe-Copenhagen-LEGO.conf /etc/wireguard/copenhagen.conf.

Once this is done, we are ready to connect to the server, do it by simply running the command: sudo wg-quick up copenhagen, and to disconnect, you can use: sudo wg-quick down copenhagen.

Finally, if you want to configure the VPN interface to be persistent across reboots, you can do so by enabling it as a service with: sudo systemctl enable [email protected].