OpenVPN is becoming very popular these days. Once setup, for Virtual Private networks, OpenVPN is much easier to use than the built in VPN protocols. The importance of the VPN connections cannot be stressed enough. There are many users now, who use Ubuntu as their primary OS. For such people, using OpenVPN for connecting to their service would be a very good idea. In this, tutorial, we will discuss how one can setup OpenVPN with Ubuntu.
Step 1: Find Tunnelblick
The first step would be to download Tunnelblick. Google it, and you would find it uploaded in the code.google.com. Once you have that, you will have to mount the Tunnelblick.dmg disk image.
Step 2: Tunnelblick.app
From the disk image which you have just downloaded, drag the Tunnelblick.dmg to your Application folder. This would activate some options in your OS, which you would have to use for other purposes. You would no find the Tunnelblick in the Application support option of your OS. Here by default there is a configuration file, named openvpn.conf. Remove this file. This would be replaced by the configuration file which would be downloaded from the website of your VPN service provider.
Step 3: Place the configuration files
Place the configuration file that you downloaded from the website, into the folder from which you removed the openvpn.conf in the last step.
Step 4: Launch the app
The Tunnelblick has a very subtle interface. It has a tunnel being show in the taskbar, and when the connection is active, it would blink. In the drop down menu of the application, you would see the name of your VPN service. Just click it, and you would be connected (if everything goes well). And you are done!
The advantage of using OpenVPN is that it takes care of many subtle things on its own. The configuration comes through without any problems, and everything goes very smoothly from there on. You should consider using VPN services for many reasons. Other than the secure connection thing, VPNs can also give you access to some of the services which are IP specific. Like say availability of Netflix outside US. Using the right VPN service, you would get an IP which is present in US, and using it you can watch and use Netflix, from any of your devices.
