I live in Victoria, Australia, where schools connect to the Internet via EduStar. In my school, we have to ask the IT staff if we want to connect to EduStar. I just installed Xubuntu 20.04 on my laptop and want to use it as my main OS. When I asked the staff, they told me that it is not possible to use Linux and refused to try.
Is what they said true?
I use a Dell Inspiron 5593 2020 with a Qualcomm QCA9377 802.11ac Wireless Adapter.
This is a political question, not a technical one. Technically there is no reason why a Linux system wouldn't be able to use an Internet connection when Windows with the same hardware works. However the refusal of IT staff to allow it can be a real obstacle. You have basically four avenues:
Try to bypass the restriction. Present a Windows PC as yours and have it connected to the school network, then without telling the IT staff copy the settings to your Linux laptop and use that. If they do MAC address registration you may have to install Windows on your laptop, register it on the school network and then switch back to Linux. This may be the easiest way but it is also risky because if IT staff finds out you may face some sort of retribution.
Challenge the ruling. Depending on the (real or pretended) reasons for the Linux ban you may succeed in having it lifted or at least getting exceptional permission. Often the reason is just that the IT staff lacks Linux knowledge (and motivation to learn) in which case you may succeed by promising you won't bother them in case of a problem. But if they managed to convince themselves and/or their management that Linux is a security problem then that avenue is barred.
Comply. That is, use Windows in school against your better judgement. You may ease the pain by setting up dual boot so you can still use Linux outside of school without having to buy a second machine.
Change school.
There is no technical reason for being unable to use Linux. But if the IT team don't have any knowledge of Linux they won't be able to support it. What's worse is that they won't be able to tell whether network problems they have are caused by Linux. You and I know that's unlikely but they don't.
The problem now is that they know you want to connect a Linux machine and they have explicitly forbidden it. You can't now claim that you didn't know it was banned. Technical solutions that enable you to bypass the blockage could just get you into trouble and I really wouldn't advise anyone to do that
You aren't the first person to hit this sort of barrier. If you don't have enough political 'clout' to force the issue then you need to gather support from people who have.
As everyone else has said, there should be no technical reason that Linux cannot access your school’s Internet connection.
For more specific information, I did a web search for “edustar internet”. The first result was an eduSTAR page on the Victorian government’s website, which says:
The eduSTAR platform provides schools with:
- A range of ICT services, which includes some of the following:
- eduSTAR.ISP — Department’s internet service provider (ISP) and internet security systems and reporting
- …
This is not particularly useful, but at least it has contact details, which I intend to use if no clear answer is provided here.
The second result was a Victorian school support article about eduSTAR. Unfortunately, this article is not accessible via HTTPS, so I used the version archived in the Wayback Machine. It suggests that Android should work, as long as it can use a proxy. If Android works, then distributions commonly referred to as “Linux”, like Ubuntu, should also work.
The only other information I could find was that at least one Victorian school specifically prohibits Linux (and everything else, besides Windows and macOS) and requires devices to be inspected before being granted network access.
Get informed. Check your school’s documentation for connecting to the Internet (you said they don’t have any) and rules for devices generally (do they say anything about Linux?).
Also, you should not have to give any reason at all for using Linux. But if you do give a reason, give a proper reason. Like SnakeDoc’s comment says, the argument about Visual Studio is false and makes it look like you do not know what you are talking about. That is not good when you are accusing them of not knowing what they are talking about.
With all the information available, you can choose from the following options:
My company laptop has Windows. The software to connect to the VPN only works on Windows, so I can not change. Yet... all my tasks pretty much require Linux.
What's the solution? Boot-up windows, connect to the network, then run Linux in a full-screen VM and bridge the network connection.
Keep using Windows as a main OS for the laptop, set up ubuntu as a VM (most modern Windows OS have HyperV capabilities included, so it should be easy) using NAT networking. That way, you get to use ubuntu without making it the IT staff's problem in any way.
If you already have a licence for Windows you could try installing WSL2 on your laptop from within Windows. This would give you the option to use a Linux environment from a limited selection while still running Windows and connecting to the network as Windows. You enable it using the "Turn Windows features on and off" function and then you can pick a Linux distro to use on the Windows store. Performance isn't as good as a native install but it can work fine for non graphics intensive development tasks. If you search for "install WSL2" you will find step by step instructions on how to do this.
I find out the ICT of Craigieburn College policy.
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)
Students may bring any device to school, that meets the specified requirements.Requirements :
The following are the minimum requirement for a device to be given access to the College network.
Software :
- Windows 10 or macOS 10.14 (or later). Android, Linux & iOS devices are NOT accepted
- Commercial Anti-Virus (available through EduSTAR portal)
Hardware :
- CPU: x86 architecture
- RAM: 4Gb minimum
- A keyboard
- A battery that can last for the entire school day without requiring charge
Note: device MUST be presented for inspection to the College ICT technicians prior to access being granted.
The College has three available personal computing options :
Purchase recommended device through the College’s commercial partner - JB Hi-Fi Commercial (Education Division)
The College has entered in to a purchasing agreement with JB Hi---Fi. Devices can be purchased directly though the JB Hi-Fi Online Portal, at a group discounted price and delivered straight to the College. To connect to the College network, the device media access control (MAC) address must be provided to the ICT technicians.
Co-contribution
Students will have access to a Netbook that will be funded by a parent co-contribution of $100 per annum. This cocontribution is the cost of leasing the device, the College will meet all other initial purchase costs. Students will be able to take their device home and this will require a $200 refundable security bond. The bond is refundable upon ceasing enrolment at the College and returning the Netbook computer in good working order. Agreements between Microsoft and the State Government allowed for a range of software packages to be installed on each machine.
BYOD like above mentioned.
Solution 1
Switch your OS as dual-boot or WSL or make a WM with large storage for Softwares and Department of Education and Training (DET) Programs.
Solution 2
Bring your portable personal wifi or smartphone hotspot if it necessary and it can supported area.
let us to know where is your college from, to understand what the your ICT policy.
Related :
Hope this helps.
Given that you've said you have to go to IT to get on the system I would suggest that there may indeed be a technical reason why they don't allow Linux machines...
Their preferred rootkit may only support Windows.
There are a large number of educational and corporate networks which simply won't allow anything to be connected which the network administrator doesn't have god-mode access to do anything they think they need to on it. Given that many educational institutions are held liable for the actions of their students they may feel they have an interest in preventing you from misusing your own hardware.
Personally I'd buy a cheap, used Windows laptop for them to monkey with so nothing they do touches any hardware I care about. As long as they don't disable Windows' Internet Connection Sharing feature you can string a network cable between the two when you need to connect to things from your personal laptop.
It's quite possible that they're telling the truth as far as they know. At least in Europe, the academic wifi eduroam is using out-of-date crypto settings, and if you try to connect using any Fedora since 34 or the most recent (22.04) Ubuntu and derivatives (this includes Pop!_OS), it will fail. In Fedora you can prevent that by running "update-crypto-policies --set DEFAULT:FEDORA32", but I haven't been able to solve the issue for Ubuntu.
Had a similar issue with fedora on my campus WiFi last year. Had to revert some cryptographic hashing policies to legacy, which sounded weird but was actually just 2 releases back. The reason being, my campus WiFi was not very modern.
I think it was ‘update-crypto-policies —-set LEGACY’ or something close to that.
I am having same issue on Ubuntu 22 now, but am not sure of the equivalent, as the above command isn’t available on Ubuntu. Someone with more knowledge might know if this is the right path.
You haven't said which distribution of linux you are using.
Understand that few linux distributions come with the software required for joining an Active Directory domain: someone will have to use the package manager to load that software (assuming that your linux distribution comes with a package manager). Have you done that? Do you know what package manager your linux distribution uses, and what packages are required?
After you have loaded the software required for joining an Active Directory domain, someone will have to initiate the process, using a valid user name and password. The process is simple, but again, depends on which distribution you are using. The scripts used by your school won't work, and the manual processes known by your school won't work.
This is all very simple, most of the time, for people who are familiar with the process. But it is a little unfair to expect your school to be familiar with the process, when it's not their standard client environment, and when even you don't (yet) know what is required.
Have you considered using a Virtual Windows Machine as the guest OS on your Linux system? The Windows VM can then be used just for using Visual Studio while you have the option of using Linux for everything else you do.
One caveat is that VM will not give you the exact performance as if you were to run Visual Studio on the Linux host but this may help you diffuse the political issue. Not the best option but it will get you going.
You can use many VMs freely available on Linux distros - I use VirtualBox (no particular reason why I chose it) for overcoming a similar issue I had with accessing digital music on one of the sheet music providers who does not not support Linux.
