I'm looking at ways of connecting a small Linux system (a Beaglebone Black, but a Raspberry Pi is near enough) on my boat in France which is headless and behind a NAT WiFi (or 3G/4G) server to my home desktop or laptop so I can 'talk' to it.
Currently I have ssh reverse tunnels set up by outward connections from the remote Linux system that allow me to ssh into the system. This works OK except that the marina WiFi it uses is a 'captive portal' system where you have to open a web browser and it pops up a login screen where you enter name and password before it connects you to the internet. The connection, once made, stays up for several weeks but when it disconnects for any reason there's no easy way to reconnect automatically, has to be a human being to do it.
So, I'm considering getting a 3G/4G USB dongle to connect via the mobile network so I don't have to jump through the marina's WiFi hoops.
I can continue to do my reverse ssh tunnel connection but everyone I talk to about this says a VPN is the answer. However I'm having a hard time seeing how to get this installed and working without a huge amount of effort.
For example wireguard is supposed to be a simpler, easier alternative to OpenVPN but take a look at:-
https://www.wireguard.com/quickstart/
It's horrible! It's do-able, I can understand all the stages but it's just not nice.
Similarly VPN tutorials are full of misinformation, take a look at this one:- https://thishosting.rocks/how-to-set-up-openvpn-on-ubuntu/
It's rubbish! ... and all the others I've looked at are either similarly wrong or more complex than the wireguard one.
Is VPN *really* this difficult? If so I'll stay with my ssh approach.