I’ll just change my web browser’s user agent then; you’re a fucking website, you don’t need to know which OS I’m using.
It’s amazing how many “unsupported” web apps work perfectly fine once you change the UA. It’s often a completely arbitrary limitation so that they can hire less qualified support staff.
and so they can use browser
vulnerabilitiesfeatures to collect more data on youNope we don’t want to hire anyone who knows anything about Linux, no one uses Linux
“Linux is unsupported”, that’ll work
Everyone: uses a UA switcher
“See? No one uses Linux, 100% of users are on Windows or MacOS”
A small publisher’s ebook platform recently started blocking firefox for me, did a bit of digging and found that if pages aren’t requested with the right headers (which work in chrome and msedge) it will respond with a 302, suggesting you go to another page which takes a few minutes and then times out.
This is probably to stop scraping, and could be because I started testing some scraping scripts on it.
Anyway, this hasn’t even stopped me scraping, I just copied the headers and use those in my script.
I use this extension by a Firefox dev
I also use it, but it doesn’t work in this case. Thats why I said headers instead of just user agent.
“Upgrading” to a supported operating system… “Upgrading”.
Yeah, that was also what got into my nerves.
I had this problem over 10 years ago. change your user-agent, problem solved.
they do it because they are regulations for educational software that must be met, like specific access requirements in order to be used in accredited courses.
it’s not anything specifically against Linux, it’s that they can’t test and validate those access requirements for anything outside Windows due to organizational limitations.
source: I worked for colleges early in my career that used Pearson then worked for a vendor that managed infrastructure and project management for Pearson. they aren’t unique, their competition is just as fucked as they are. most still use waterfall because upper mgmt is old and refuses to adapt.
My bank does this too. I also just change the user agent to switch and it works with no issues.
At this point it just seems silly that they even want to go out of their way to Prohibit Linux users
“Our spyware is not able to accommodate your platform.”
The horror stories I’ve read about what you give the software access to do (assuming there’s truth to them; I’ve never run it myself).
Edit: I’m realizing now your screenshot is probably for a web course.
It’s hilarious how bad it is
I won’t ramble but I’m a cybersecurity professional with a lot of certs and… I’ve played with it (Pearson VUE)
Hey Pearson, I have completely defeated your anticheat measures. Ironically, have used my expertise to pass cybersecurity exams. Fight me.
Hey OP, use a free windows VM. Guess how many monitors your VM has? Guess how many your host can have? Yeah.
This was 2019, so they may have gotten past that but I tells ya… For folks testing cybersec pros, they sure don’t have airtight opsec.
I found more, but cannot responsibly disclose 😊
They’re in the business of selling the illusion of security to university administrators.
Most money moves because a retarded manager/executive has a retarded idea, I’m sure of it.
Also kickbacks, don’t forget the kickbacks
This is why I just suck it up and go to a testing center even though more often than not it’s unpleasant too. I’m not installing all their tools and having to clear an entire room so there’s nothing that can be seen is such a hassle.
You should get bonus points in cybersecurity for bypassing that crap
“Upgrade”? Every other option is a downgrade. Sue them for false advertisement.
Very loose interpretation of the word “upgrade” they’re employing here…
I assume it is a generic message, let’s say youd run windows 7. Then this message would sound more reasonable.
But I agree, this is crazy if it is running in a browser
“upgrade”
Upgrayedd. With two “d”'s. For a double-dose of telemetry.
A CEO’s love is very different from that of a FOSS.
“You are an unfit mother, your children have been placed in the custody of Carls Jr.”
Carls Jr; Fuck you! I’m eating.
I always hate this when it’s used to target Firefox.
“upgrade to chrome”
Like… What the fuck?
Just use a user agent switcher.
Aw, manggg. But I just upgraded to Linux last week. Shoot…
Back to being treated like an idiot, force fed bloat, having no control over my own PC, and taking four steps to get everything done but often ending up down a rabbit hole of 19 step troubleshooting just to say, “Fuck it! Fine! I’ll accept the new feature” then being toured on the new feature after it crashes first then won’t let you login, but finally you do and THEN you’ve got your file open but forget what for by then, all the while it’s notifying you of updates constantly but you won’t run them because you noticed it contains the AMD driver which is the old one so Adrenaline will stop working but that also means Windows has somehow undone the group policy fucking around you had to do. And they say Linux is hard while Windows thinks I’m the fucking idiot and I CANT EVEN SHRINK THE FUCKING PARTITION BECAUSE THE GOD DAMNED PAGE FILE IS JIZZED ALL OVER THE FUCKING DRIVE!!! RAAARRRGH!!!
snaps back
Huh, sorry. I get flashbacks still. The doctors say with the right therapy, I’ll be better in a year.
I felt this revulsion in my bones. :shudder:
Haven’t you heard? Pearson’s requires at least Linux 2.
That came out in 1996.
Let me just check something on my terminal.
$ uname -sr Linux 6.14.4-arch1-1I’m suspicious.
This means they forgot platforms other than Windows exists. It’s likely they’re checking for currently supported systems and anything older is insecure, so blocked for your security.
Likely something like this pseudocode
function isPlatformVersionSupported(useragent) { // Windows XP is NT 5.1 // Windows Vista is NT 6.0 // Windows 7 is NT 6.1 // Windows 8 is NT 6.2 // Windows 8.1 is NT 6.3 // Windows 10 and 11 is NT 10.0 if (useragent.name == "Windows" && useragent.version.match(/Windows NT (6\.3|10)/)) { return true } // TODO: insert supported macos versions here return false }The actual audacity
I had that problem. I changed my ua to Edge on Windows, and the message went away. Everything worked.
Holy shit, why even implement the message then? There is no good answer.
Netflix does the same thing with “supported browsers.” It doesn’t matter if it’s actually supported, just whether it’s one of the two or three it allows because it can do analytics or whatever with them.
Huh, would that work for remote proctors?
No because that requires installing a rootkit on your machine as part of their anti-cheat system.
Their deliberate word choice of “upgrade” to supported operating system is mildly infuriating.
They probably assume you are running something like Windows 7
Uhh
Your operating system, Linux, is not supported…
Right, but that could still be given dynamically by a library as “one of the unsupported ones”, getOSName(). They still might not have hard-coded “Linux is bad”.
I’d like to interject for a moment…
Wow, I laughed far too much after reading this comment. Thank you kind stranger.
They know which operating system you use based on the user agent, so they know it’s Linux.
Which will be “If not Windows 11 or Mac os then report os string”. I don’t think they specifically took the time to research different OS’s and list them.
deleted by creator
Captain, what should we do? She’s not on the list.
we have wildly different definitions for “mildly”!
“Upgrade”
LOL
Damn! If only we had some sort of technology that was OS independent and served as a way to view content and run code written for it without having to recompile for every platform.
I am of course talking about web browsers. Which I’m betting this screenshot is from.
The funny thing is that their server is probably running on Linux.
they aren’t all. vast majority is Windows Server and IBM.
edit: because people seem confused. I’m talking about Pearson directly, not global OS stats.
chill tf out Linux weebs. I’m one of you.
Windows has a laughable market share when it comes to webservers.
I’m talking specifics, not globally.
Nearly all of my daughters sites she visited in college were nix servers. The exception being one administration machine she used for her payroll access as a RA.
By “nix” do you actually mean Nix, or do you mean “*nix” as any Unix derivative?
Guess.
Edit: ;) I guess you are all guessing poorly. Nix when I looked it up is just another fringe linix distro. Never heard of it because I don’t need a purpose built crippled distro for anything. Since a guess is too hard to do I will tell you even now most websites I access according to my router stats are Linix distros. Every now and then there will be a bsd based one and ever rarer than that a windows site. I’m seeing these downvotes as a function of bias against the norm. I find it funny and responses like this always bring a smile to my face.
Guess what most IBM big irons are running nowadays?
Unix
Well, AIX (one of IBMs UNIX variants) is old, and, AFAIK more or less legacy stuff. The other is RHEL, which is s Linux.
The world runs on legacy
Dust? (but really its not Linux or windows anyway)
RHEL, since they bought red hat.
z/OS
For closed and proprietary stuff, and things that still run on FORTRAN and COBOL, yes. But about anything running a web frontend, it’s Linux (RHEL).
AIX (Unix), Windows, Powervm?
Windows? On a mainframe? Microsoft may be ambicious, but that is a few number to big for them.
Lol what? Linux servers are still dominant in market share.
Pearson directly, not globally.
That makes more sense. Thank you for the context.
That is both laughably wrong, and immediately verifiable as false. As far as server marketshare goes, Linux leads the pack with 62.7%.
Use Librewolf or a plugin that masks your user agent for privacy purposes; hides your OS so you can’t be fingerprinted so easily.
For the record, my friend (he uses arch btw) has used Pearson before and I dont believe it actually affected him, so to me the message means “it could work for you but we won’t support Linux if something screws up on your end because we’re lazy developers”
NO! YOU FUCKING UPGRADE!
