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How To. How To. Easy installation of CyberGhost on Ubuntu Zorin and more!

Several forums, including CyberGhost's, claim - and it's not true! - that it's not possible to install their VPN for Linux on distributions other than those listed (Ubuntu 16.04 and 18.04 etc., or Linux Mint 20 for example).

Gone are distros with other names, even though they are based on Debian and Ubuntu, such as Zorin?

In fact, if you're using an Ubuntu or Fedora-based OS, CyberGhost's VPN will probably work just fine. The problem lies not in a software limitation, but in the sorting performed by its installation file, which is based solely on name and not on technological compatibility.

As a first step, then, after making sure that our operating system is compatible with one of the versions mentioned by the publisher, we check the name of our distribution, as spelled in our system preferences (Settings > About > Operating system name). At the time of writing, we have Zorin OS 16.1 on our test machine.

All we need to do is edit the install.sh file (the one in our CyberGhost directory downloaded from the publisher's website) and, since we're using Zorin OS, locate the line of code that mentions the most recent Ubuntu version (in this case, line 82) to replace the name "Ubuntu" with "Zorin" and the version number with the one indicated on our system.

In our example, we have modified line 82 as follows:

 elif [ "$distroName" == "Zorin" ] && [ "$distroVersion" == "16" ]; then 

We save the file and then - after checking that our computer is already equipped with OpenVPN and glibc - we run it from the terminal to launch the installation. If we've extracted our directory to the desktop :

cd Bureau/CyberGhost/
sudo bash install.sh

That's all there is to it!

Once installation is complete, at the time of writing we're still using the Terminal to activate, modify settings and deactivate CyberGhost VPN. The same goes for activating the WireGuard protocol (which bypasses ISP speed limits).

So, rather than entering long commands in Terminal mode for each use, we prefer to write these routines in executable files. For example, to activate the VPN on the Zurich servers in Switzerland:

#!/bin/bash

sudo cyberghostvpn --traffic --country-code CH --city "Zurich" --wireguard --connect

Which we have registered under the name vpnzurich before making it executable and copying it to the directory /usr/bin/ directory using the following Terminal commands:

chmod +x vpnzurich
sudo cp vpnzurich /usr/bin/

We repeated this operation for as many servers as required. Then simply go to Terminal and run the command vpnzurich to activate our VPN.

To save us some time, we have done the same for its deactivation, with a file containing the following code:

#!/bin/bash

sudo cyberghostvpn --stop

We have saved this file under the sweet name vpnoff which we made executable and copied to /usr/bin/ just as we did for the other files.

What a pleasure!