In my last post, I wrote:
Well, I recently received an old MacBook Air from 2010 with Snow Leopard on it. Yes, the version before Lion, when it still had a dedicated “Hide all the bars and shit” button on the top right.
I was tasked with provisioning the latest possible software on it and make it into a Thin Client for a VM that’s gonna live in a server somewhere. It’s not mine, hence the “Receiving” rather than Getting or Buying.
That article didn’t garner that much attention – But there’s this one thing.
I was tasked with making it a thin client so that the user could shove a Smart Card (glorified name for a Cert-on-an-USB) and use it to authenticate into an app called OfficeBanking. Sounds simple, right? Should be.
It runs OS X High Sierra and has Microsoft Remote Desktop on it. I’ve ran into some… issues now.
- Tunnelblick suddenly shot itself in the leg. I’m running a version with vulnerabilities that could impact the user. I’m really bummed out because there’s no VPN client that can do that
- Smart Cards are detected… sometimes. It’s really unstable, bipolar, and I can’t seem to trace where the issue’s coming from so I can fix it in case of a tech support situation.
I need OpenVPN because that’s the way this laptop can connect to the server when the access is not on-site, which should be an option to the user.
Furthermore – Linux would run WORSE on that little MacBook Air than MacOS X. Yes, it sounds weird for that to happen, but MacOS is better optimized for the hardware. And I’m not talking out of my ass either. The battery on my 2013 MacBook Pro lasted LONGER on Catalina than it did on a modern Linux distribution (think Arch or Pop!_OS)
I’ve run out of options, and I’m sad about giving the laptop away. I would really like a small little laptop as a thin client that I can use to do shit on and connect to servers remotely, as well as run old software or connect stuff that requires old drivers (like Dynacord mixers) and record them onto an HDD
Money’s the only thing that’s missing from the equation. MacBook Airs are cute, not that powerful but not that weak. I’ve dealt with worse hardware, and I can deal with this.