Context: The Finnish Marticulation Examination is a national examination required to qualify for entry into a university in Finland (not strictly required, but the vast majority will have passed the exam before university). These are basically the final exams of Finnish “high school”. The current digital system used for the exams is called “Abitti”, which is a Debian-based OS. The students boot into the system with provided USB-sticks.
In the linked article, there is the following statement (in Finnish):
Computer technology advances quickly, and the current Abitti works in fewer and fewer computers. The threat is that computers that can run the current Linux-environment won’t be available in the near future.
The new system (“Abitti 2”), which is planned to be used by Autumn 2026, uses locked-down Web-apps written for each supported OS. Support is planned for Windows, Mac, and ChromeOS. Linux support “needs further investigation”. As I understand it, the current situation is that the old Linux USB-stick method (now called “Abitti 2 student-stick”) is still used as a backup for those without Windows, Mac, or ChromeOS.
I think the main premise of Linux-bootable computers not being available in the near future is extremely dystopian. Thoughts?
You can’t spend and earn millions by doing simple bug fixes and simply Debian version bump so they needed to make something.
Having worked as an admin for both systems, this absolutely sucks… The cost of running these servers is going to at least quadruple due to the new system requirements, and tens of thousands of USB sticks are going to become e-waste.
We used to run these servers on old laptops, but now with the new system requirements (which I won’t disclose here, as I am not sure if they have been publically stated yet) the cost of running these servers is going to quadruple for most institutions, moreso for ones buying it as SaaS from OpinSys.
Not a fan AT ALL, but hey, at least I have 200 stickers advertising the new version 🙄
Easy fix, forbid the sales of computers in Finland that do not let user boot on the OS of choice, including of course Abitti.
Sure a small percentage of Fins might not buy their computers in the country via a national online shop but I bet it’s a minority.
For the few who still do, make a RPi5 or equivalent available instead of a USB stick. It’s a bit more expensive but not so much.
That would require banning like 70% of comouter market (yes phones etc. are computers and I’m tired of pretending they’re not)
I agree that computers are phone but in this specific context I don’t believe that would fit. Do people take an exam on a phone? Actual average people I mean, not few hackers who (rightfully) believe it’s an interesting technical feat. Also IMHO for phones to be considered computers then isn’t a locked bootloader ALSO precisely a problem?
So… sure get it fixed for phones too!
If Apple managed to switch it’s own hardware port to USB-C this seems relatively simple in comparison.
Kids are getting extremely dumb with computers.
Reading the FAQs, the whole situation smacks of changing for the sake of change. It seems like some important functionality of the old system isn’t available in the new system, but they’re pushing it through regardless. Combined with this downplaying of Linux support, perhaps some political representatives with low technical skills have been talking to some lobbyists. And unless the Finnish school system has bought into Chromebooks in a big way, they seem unusually eager to support ChromeOS.
I wonder if the whole Secure Boot/Microsoft shim key issue is a part of this.
unless the Finnish school system has bought into Chromebooks in a big way
Yeah goverment is now giving laptops students at that level, on a loan basis. Just so that everybody has access to free study materials that are now partly of fully digital. The computers are usually, but not always chromebooks because they are cheap and chromebooks are the “student laptop” anyways.
I wonder if the whole Secure Boot/Microsoft shim key issue is a part of this.
Yeah that’s part of it. The boot issues with usb. It’s apparently a total lottery of whose computer decides not to boot when the exam starts with the new windows limitations.
The Finnish Marticulation Examination
It’s ‘matriculation’, right? Both times? Is that part of the test?
This doesn’t make any sense. Web apps are by their nature universal, but even if you needed to target individual OSes for some reason the app engines that one would use like Edge Webview or Electron run on all the OSes mentioned…
The only way this really makes sense is if they are going with something stupid like Lockdown Browser which, while based on chromium as far as I know, has no official Linux support.
I mean if the current system is truly ancient and doesn’t support UEFI I could imagine it ceasing to work, or something like that. But that should be easy enough to fix.
UEFI support would be such a trivial feature to add
It would be disappointing if the county where Linux was born moved away from it out of ignorance.
It may be that when they say newer hardware “cannot run Linux” they actually mean that their system, that requires a BIOS, will not run.
It could also be that some students have ARM laptops, and they’ve got an x86 version of Debian.
ARM laptops, and they’ve got an x86 version of Debian.
I feel like Raspberry Pi OS (formerly Raspbian) a lot of that is already addressed, including package availability. Few years ago it was tricky but now, a LOT is available due to the success of ARM on phones, tablets, etc.
Oh I’m aware, I just wanted to add to the trivial list of issues. But I think there might still be issues with some Snapdragon CPUs.
I would think any webapp based system is going to leave more room for cheating.
Unless they mean something like the Respondus rootkit
https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/best-way-to-use-respondus-lockdown-browser-for-school/26098
IMO some exams should just be proctored in person
And on paper.
Is this because it’s getting difficult for students to mess with the boot options?
They claim that to be, but in my experience I have had maybe two students ask me for help with boot options, out of around 2-4 thousand? This was at a college with no computer science program, and most people being not very savvy with technology.
The ones asking for hekp usually had some old Macbook with weird boot menus
Yes, it is listed as one of the disadvantages of the current approach in page 5 of this report. But I think the main reason is that the students can’t boot at all with newer computers.
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He’s all Finnish. His mother tongue just happens to be a (official) minority language.
News like this gives me intrusive thoughts that Linux might be dying…
sudo rm -rf ./intrusive_thoughts
if anything, linux is now the youngest it has ever been (in terms of younger people using it, earlier it was almost all neckbeards, and i only have a tiny beard)
I think the Debian Fedora and Arch groups are the most diverse they’ve ever been.
