“Upgrading” to a supported operating system… “Upgrading”.
I tried to download Microsoft Office on Linux Mint and I couldn’t even download the exe (to run through wine), I needed to go to Windows to download it … now I just need to make it work (I am in the 1% of people who actually need official Excel)
This might be the right case to use a VM. Though, I just keep a spare SSD with Windows.
Would be great if the web app had the same features as the desktop app
yo fuck pearson fr
Just had to deal with this last semester. Get a user agent switcher plugin and change your OS to windows, it should work for everything but proctored tests. You’ll likely have to go in person for those
What “Key features” from an educational course could possibly require windows? It’s spying on you.
They just don’t want to support it to save dev time/money
Oh yes, the very expensive Dev time cost of zero, because it is a fucking website.
Prolly don’t like that sandboxed browser, so Inconsiderate
Its comical that in the last 25 years Linux has gone from a nerd-only tool to something that a 10 year old can install on an air-fryer and still we deal with this bs
Your operating system Ubuntu, is not supported.
Click here to upgrade to Arch, btw.
Our website runs on a linux server, can you not use it though
Upgrade
Insults on top of incompetence, huh?
It’s Pearson.
Its a parasite
bro, my math and calc professor made us use this for our course despite the fact that our college really wants profs to stop using 3rd party sites like these and just use Brightspace.
It was like $100 CAD too. And it’s a fucking WEBSITE. Why is windows required? Do you need to ring 0 access so I can solve a derivative or something???
Its about data collection under the guise of “security”
It’s also about making it the equivalent of pushing a button for the professor. Want a test that covers chapters X-y? Push three buttons and the students have a test over those chapters. No effort means they can jerk off in the direction of the grant that was just rejected because they used a bad word according to the government.
In my experience professors are heavily overworked and heavily underpaid. Offloading work onto other systems to get a better work-life balance seems like a natural response.
That kind of fuckery drove me off a company-sponsored training course.
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…
They know which operating system you use based on the user agent, so they know it’s 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
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.
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.
Uhh
Your operating system, Linux, is not supported
This is like the Apple Business website, which only works in Safari, according to them. Used the User-Agent Switcher plugin, and the website/dashboard works just fine on Firefox in Linux.
You heard that OP? That’s how you do it, it’ll still work on Linux.
welp, I use Vivaldi without any user-agent switching and it works fine
I had this problem with Pearson. I got around it by making sure my bowser (librewolf) reported windows as my user agent. This was last semester for an online intro level course, ymmv
Edit: I see your other posts about how its not blocking access… Tbh I don’t remember checking, I just remember checking my browser settings haha. Guess I didn’t have to bother.
Pearson has an effective monopoly on teacher certification tests. I don’t understand why private companies get to make up so many of the rules.
Money makes might makes right
