In an effort to browse more securely when I travel, I'm trying to set up either VPN or a proxy server on one of my PCs at home. First off, which one would be better for my purpose: VPN or proxy? I don't necessarily need access to the home network, nor do I plan to do any remote desktop-type stuff. Is there a performance difference?

Also, I've been playing around with setting up a proxy server. The host machine is running Linux Mint Debian Edition (it's what I was already running, didn't select it for this purpose) and the laptop is running Ubuntu. I use ssh to sync files across my home LAN using rsync, but the proxy thing hasn't worked so far. Anybody know their way around this kind of setup who could give a newbie some help?