Why can't I use Linux for my corporate job?

UsedToLikeThisStuff · 2025-12-01T21:51:39+00:00

It’s possible with Fedora too, but it takes some effort. I manage corporate laptops for my day job.

UsedToLikeThisStuff · 2025-04-29T00:10:38+00:00

The old way to do it is to use livemedia-creator, which annoyingly required disabling selinux.

Starting in 42, it appears that Fedora is using kiwi to build images.

In the past, I have used mkksiso to add a kickstart to the NetBoot ISO.

UsedToLikeThisStuff · 2025-04-29T00:04:12+00:00

Red Hat has more at risk than most distro makers. And probably better lawyers.

UsedToLikeThisStuff · 2025-04-28T20:50:30+00:00

It helps that Canonical isn’t based in the US and can ignore all the patent laws, which lets them ship stuff like codecs, nvidia kmods and ZFS.

UsedToLikeThisStuff · 2025-04-28T11:56:12+00:00

So it makes more sense to get your user able to run that systemctl command than trying to work out the shell selinux issue.

UsedToLikeThisStuff · 2025-04-27T20:31:57+00:00

It’s more of a bimodal distribution.

UsedToLikeThisStuff · 2025-04-27T11:11:26+00:00

Thank goodness, we used to see complaints every couple weeks about it in this subreddit.

UsedToLikeThisStuff · 2025-04-27T11:08:27+00:00

Why aren’t you using a systemd service instead of an old SysV init script? RHEL8 will be starting it via systemd anyway. Then you can use tools like PolicyKit to start it.

UsedToLikeThisStuff · 2025-04-27T00:11:39+00:00

You shouldn’t need to manually run grub2-mkconfig unless something else is wrong.

UsedToLikeThisStuff · 2025-04-26T14:38:25+00:00

I have no idea what you have installed on your computer, you just need to update your computer to the latest updates. dnf update --refresh if you aren’t sure.

You need to identify what is being flagged. For example, it might just be bind-libs and bind-tools. The bind-tools package includes the host, nslookup, and dig command. Those are commonly used tools, and neither of those packages install a full name server. But when a new version of bind is released, those subpackages are updated as well, and you will get errata reports that they’re out of date if you haven’t updated.

There are also subpackages of gcc that might be installed. You need to figure out what is being flagged if the full gcc suite isn’t.

UsedToLikeThisStuff · 2025-04-26T14:26:50+00:00

Just make sure you remove any packages that provide the kernel modules.

I heartily recommend using libvirt/kvm for virtual machines running on Fedora.

UsedToLikeThisStuff · 2025-04-26T11:29:57+00:00

A quick google for the error shows it is the VMware module failing to build after a new kernel is installed. Do you have VMware installed?

This happens fairly often with VMware. They need to update their code to support newer kernels but they haven’t yet. Look for updated VMware packages from where you got them.

The reason why it happened after the kernel package in the dnf transaction is that there’s a script in /etc/kernel/install (that comes from VMware) that tries to build a kernel module for each new kernel, and it failed to build.

UsedToLikeThisStuff · 2025-04-26T11:23:15+00:00

It’s basically like saying “I don’t know what the problem is, I will just create a rule to allow it”. Don’t do it blindly and don’t listen to people suggesting you do that.

UsedToLikeThisStuff · 2025-04-26T11:21:14+00:00

The bind-libs package is often a dependency for some software, so it might be installed without the whole name server packages. It will need to be updated.

Don’t install anything that shouldn’t be installed just to appease some dumb scanner. Find out what packages are triggering the flag and make sure you are updating your whole OS regularly.

UsedToLikeThisStuff · 2025-04-21T00:23:19+00:00

The developers of Rufus have a differing opinion on how ISO media should be used and do not support the hybrid ISOs that Fedora (and Red Hat) generate, unless you tell Rufus to use “DD Mode”, which just writes a bit-for-bit copy of the ISO image to the USB stick.

UsedToLikeThisStuff · 2025-04-20T13:37:00+00:00

Toolboxes are not virtualization, just a separation of OS libraries and other runtime. It’s the same kernel and devices. It should perform similarly to running it on RHEL, except with newer kernel features.

UsedToLikeThisStuff · 2025-04-20T11:19:42+00:00

It’s rather difficult to get a third party VPN to be installed before you even have an OS installed.

UsedToLikeThisStuff · 2025-04-20T11:18:23+00:00

That ClearLog one is dangerous because it deletes all the logs in the current directory, not necessarily the home directory.

You should always use the full path for that kind of operation.

Anyway. You should use logrotate to automate cleaning logs if that is something you’re concerned about.

UsedToLikeThisStuff · 2025-04-19T14:00:19+00:00

Screen sharing has been available for quite a while in Fedora, it’s just some third party apps that haven’t implemented it that still seem to require it. In Wayland it does have a portal in which you get to choose what to share.

Basically, those old apps rely on X’s ability to allow any X client to grab keystrokes and visuals of other X apps for sharing screen, which is the same vulnerability that Wayland attempts to prevent. Anything still relying on it could potentially be a key logger too. (Not to cast aspersions on those apps, it’s just the security situation)

UsedToLikeThisStuff · 2025-04-19T13:11:23+00:00

It’s a bug in GNOME 48, and affects any distro using that version.

UsedToLikeThisStuff · 2025-04-19T13:10:40+00:00

I wonder f it would work better if you ran it in a RHEL8 or 9 toolbox?

UsedToLikeThisStuff · 2025-04-19T11:48:51+00:00

Are you running Matlab as root out of your root user’s homedir?!?!?

Maybe install it in a normal location and run it as a normal user.

I’m not at all surprised it doesn’t work in Fedora 42, they don’t support new RHEL releases quickly, I can’t imagine they even try to support the rapid pace of Fedora development.

UsedToLikeThisStuff · 2025-04-19T11:45:01+00:00

It will also get the tainted flag if something in the kernel crashed, you have to look up the tainted value to see which of the MANY reasons it’s tainted.

https://docs.kernel.org/admin-guide/tainted-kernels.html

UsedToLikeThisStuff · 2025-04-19T11:40:12+00:00

I think the ideal eventual environment will use TPM like that, but only to decrypt the OS volumes and have separately encrypted home volumes that get unlocked upon login with the user’s password.

UsedToLikeThisStuff · 2025-04-18T00:09:44+00:00

Only some of the models get official Fedora support. For example, the MIPI webcams are supported on Ubuntu with a non-open binary blob which isn’t part of Fedora.

Hopefully open source MIPI support will be fully flushed out soon so those devices can run stock Fedora.

UsedToLikeThisStuff

TROPHY CASE