After going through all steps having problems authenticating login although my user/password are correct. I also asked Proton VPN, but in this case Im adding it here in case anyone here has had the same issue...tnx
Done! Your account has been successfully initialized.
< home directory >:~$ sudo protonvpn connect -f
Connecting to US-CA#117 via UDP...
[!] Authentication failed.
[!] Please make sure that your Username and Password is correct.
aj-linuxlite@ajlinuxlite-Latitude-E5250:~$