“Upgrade”
LOL
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.
They’re probably using a third party library to do user agent detection. I doubt anyone ever tested their code on Linux in the first place. They’re probably writing code like “if Windows version >= 10 or macOS version >= 10.14 or Android version > 10 or iOS version > 14” and Linux just happens to fall through because it has none of those versions.
Captain, what should we do? She’s not on the list.
The program has the information, but that doesn’t mean the people that wrote the code felt it was worth their time to make the “upgrade” text inclusive to Linux, if they even considered the possibility of Linux.
If they were using user agents for identification, Android browsers on “Desktop mode” would be wrongly identified as “Linux”. Even Discord has this issue on their download page. “Premium” Android devices with large screens use Desktop mode by default
deleted by creator
we have wildly different definitions for “mildly”!
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.
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.
“Upgrade”? Every other option is a downgrade. Sue them for false advertisement.
“Upgrading” to a supported operating system… “Upgrading”.
Yeah, that was also what got into my nerves.
Upgrade
Insults on top of incompetence, huh?
It’s Pearson.
Its a parasite
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.
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
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
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!
How tf do you not support an operating system. Like you gotta go out of your way to detect and block the operating system. Like if you put in 0 effort it would probably work but your company really spent money making their product less accessible for no reason.
Because Linux doesn’t have any legitimate programs to enforce the DRM on their files, presumably. Plus their .exes/.dmgs for companion tooling won’t work on Linux, unless you’re the kind of person smart enough to bypas this message.
To be honest, the code generating this message probably just checks if you’re on at least Windows 10 or macOS 14 to make sure their code works, and just echoes back the OS if it’s not supported (Android, iOS). I doubt anyone bothered testing for Linux on their website, let alone care to fix the problem.
I don’t really disagree with you. It’s dumb to go out of your way to block an OS that probably works just fine.
That said, the answer is probably “lawyers” and an attempt to limit liability. People rely on the course materials to work. If they don’t want to out the effort into testing to ensure that their software works on Linux, even if it would probably be fine, they may want to limit the possibility of being sued by someone when it somehow screws up their semester.
So, they out up a soft barrier that says “this may not work right” but let you use it anyway. They have deniability if something goes wrong while the savvy Linux user probably just laughs and changes their user agent.
Essentially, no one is hurt and the lawyers are happy.
The motivation from their side is not wanting to support Linux. There’s a difference between working and supported; support costs them money in terms of every phone call from every person for whom the material doesn’t work correctly, as that means paid trained staff on hand all the time whether you’re having linux issues right now or not. Imagine if one person a year had linux issues, requiring them to hire a full time linux tech with nothing to do but pick up the phone once a year. By putting a roadblock in front that people can get around, it can ‘work’ on that system while they have a leg to stand on to say no to any linux user who wants help they can’t provide.
The most infuriating part is that they call it an “upgrade”
Yeah I go from an OS that I know how to use up and down to an ad riddled bloated piece of garbage. Thanks!
