WireGuard is a modern VPN protocol built directly into the Linux kernel since version 5.6, and this guide walks through the full server and client setup on Debian 13 (Trixie) using nothing but the standard package manager and a handful of config files.
Most sysadmins still reach for OpenVPN out of habit, but these days that often means accepting a slower tunnel, managing a certificate authority, and dealing with a config file that can run to 50 lines before you’ve done anything meaningful.
WireGuard does the same job with just two config files, a key pair on each side, and a tunnel that comes up in under a second. The trade-off is that WireGuard runs only over UDP, so if your network actively blocks UDP traffic or you need to disguise it as HTTPS, then OpenVPN over TCP port 443 is still the better choice.