Bummer. For whatever reason I always get much better speeds on openvpn servers.

I’ve had an active iVPN sub for almost 8 years now. Cannot say anything bad about them whatsoever

it hasn't happened on other distros but i have other bigger issues on them so i never could test for a longer period. took me a year to find what caused it and it hasn't happened since i switched from mullvad. fun bonus: ovpn destroyed my nvidia drivers on mint...

A bit annoying for all the things that don't support openvpn, like old Synology NAS devices.

I remember maybe 12-15 years ago, setting OpenVPN on my TomatoUSB flashed router, invoking all kind of openssl command to generate certificates, keys, signing stuff, setting the router, setting the TAP/TUN clients etc. but once setup it works for years on my laptop, phone, etc.

Now with WG I basically scan on my phone a QR code generated on my Merlin router and that's it.

I started on mint years ago and it was an okay foot in the door, but would not recommend to anyone (including beginners). Fedora is my goto for new users these days. I use arch (btw) and have had much more luck on rolling release.

Not gonna try to convince you off Mint, but it does sound like you're having issues with it.

Is that a Mint Cinnamon issue primarily?

Well it was written to replace open VPN right? So that makes sense

Because OpenVPN is fiddly to set up and modern Wireguard setups seem to scale well enough.

merlin has built-in wireguard support??

I remember maybe 12-15 years ago, setting OpenVPN on my TomatoUSB flashed router, invoking all kind of openssl command to generate certificates, keys, signing stuff, setting the router, setting the TAP/TUN clients etc. but once setup it works for years on my laptop, phone, etc.

Now with WG I basically scan on my phone a QR code generated on my Merlin router and that's it.

You can install a wireguard spk from blackvoid - Wireguard SPK for your Synology NAS.

Try openwrt, ddwrt is cancer.

EDIT: it’s been pointed out to me that using NetworkManager for Wireguard setup is shit. Instead use nmcli, this seems to have solved my problem.

I'm using Bazzite Linux with KDE, and for me Wireguard setup is copy/pasting several bits of information on multiple settings pages. OpenVPN is just downloading a single config file and inputting my user/pass.

Also, Wireguard disconnects so often, no matter which distro I'm on, that it's a pain in the butt having to reconnect a few times an hour. Not to mention that I can't have it set to autoconnect on login, or my internet doesn't work until I disconnect and reconnect.

WG was always so much better anyway.

Only the opposite has ever happened for me.

Sounds like an issue with your network or routes. By design, WG is faster.

Not sure about that. I set up a wg vpn server on a system which then became unresponsive whenever wg was fully saturating the network. Turns out there is apparently no way to throttle or prioritize a wg server, the only way I could think of would be to dedicate a vm to solely the wg vpn and throttle that vm in its networking.
I instead switched to openvpn which can simply be throttled via a line in its configuration.

Besides that missing feature, openvpn also doesn't require figuring out the right iptables commands to verbatim paste into its config as startup and shutdown commands. Setting it up was way easier than wg (though openvpn too wasn't exactly user-friendly).

WG to me seems too clunky and unfinished for more mainstream usage, though I am sure it wouldn't be an issue for a large commercial user like mullvad that will have no issue with all that.

Regarding link saturation - have you tried tc/wondershaper? https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/28198/how-to-limit-network-bandwidth#28203

Iptables commands - that was needed at the very launch of wg, I've not had to deal with it for some time now.

Personal/commercial use - I'm on a completely opposite side. It's perfect for personal use, but its lack of dhcp support makes me question its capability in a commercial setting. Many providers offer it, so clearly that's not an insurmountable task, but I'm still curious how they sort out their backend.

I'm sure it is, Im just not sure where to start and I get pretty decent speeds on open vpn. I guess now I'm going to have to try to figure it out