Step one is to head on over to the Private Internet Access download page.
That’ll give you a .run file. Save it to your ~/Downloads directory.
Open up a terminal, cd to your Downloads directory, and make the .run file executable.
chmod +x pia-linux-*.*.*-*.run
Before running the installer, we are going to create two symbolic links so the PIA installer does not complain. Solus is structured a bit differently than most other Linux distributions.
sudo mkdir -p /usr/local
sudo ln -s /usr/bin /usr/local/bin
sudo ln -s /usr/share/defaults/iproute2/ /etc/iproute2
Run the file in your terminal and follow through the install instructions. Should go smoothly without errors.
./pia-linux-*.*.*-*.run
Here’s the tricky part that took me hours to figure out.
First, Private Internet Access currently relies on net-tools (primarily netstat. Also ifconfig (which is installed on Solus) and route). Now, the problem here is that net-tools is a deprecated set of utilities and Solus, being ahead of the curve, removed it from their repositories early. No worries, we can still install it.
First, install some utilities.
sudo eopkg it -c system.devel
sudo eopkg it git
Now we will install net tools. I recommend running each line one at a time.
cd /opt
sudo git clone https://github.com/ecki/net-tools.git
cd net-tools
sudo make # Press enter a bunch of times when asked the questions
Almost there! Now we will install only the needed utilities through symbolic links
The final step is to create two more symlinks.
sudo ln -s $PWD/route /sbin/
sudo ln -s $PWD/netstat /sbin/
# Solus already comes with ifconfig, but it functions a little differently than the ifconfig version we need
sudo ln -s $PWD/ifconfig /sbin/
You should be able to connect to the PIA VPN with ease now. Enjoy!
Note that all of the complex stuff we did only has to be done once. Private Internet Access will update itself. Well, you have to click a button to update but it will let you know.
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