Hi @mbessa and @garylinker ,
Unfortunately the problem is not with Red Hat!
See the official getting ready guide, from page 18:
https://www.redhat.com/rhdc/managed-files/tr-remote-exams-preparation-ebook-f27382-202103-en_1.pdf
Extract:
Important: 2018 and later series of Mac systems have been found to have compatibility
issues with several Linux® distributions. These issues impact the remote exam image as well.
The issues include, but are not limited to:
Î T2 security system prevents booting from an external device by default.
Î 2019 Macbook Pro keyboard and touchpad doesn’t work when booted from an external media.
Î Other internal components such as webcam, mic, and wifi adapters are not detected by many Linux distributions.
If your system encounters such issues, please use another laptop that meets the system requirements and passes the compatibility test
I made my own research on the internet out of curiosity, and unfortunately it's more on the side of Apple's not sharing the source code of their new hardware (that T2 chip thing): as a result many developers can not make some features work.
Unfortunately the T2 chip, is a secure thing, so it's very unlikely that Apple would release any source code.
In fact I even read there are some flaw with that chip:
https://www.wired.com/story/apple-t2-chip-unfixable-flaw-jailbreak-mac/
There's also some opensource project, where some individual contributors are trying to make that T2 work with Linux:
https://wiki.t2linux.org/state/
Bottom Line:
Apple released recent macbook models with some new hardware component providing among other things, security features. The source code is not made available, which impacts the entire opensource community and in particular makes things hard to have Linux Support.
I do not work with the team doing the Remote Exam environment. That team within Red Hat is very secure, and we can understand that they act as a blackbox not to reveal any secret to ensure the exam integrity (like encryption, anti cheats...anything that would/could give unfair advantage to any candidate).
Saying that, I highly doubt that any recent macbook will be supported anytime soon by the Remote Exam environment. Based on my interpretation of the Linux for T2 state page shared earlier, I even doubt anything would be completed before many months/year(s).
I would suggest what was in the preparation guide, try to use another laptop. Even borrow some to a friend of you can, booting from the live USB exam does not interfere with the installed OS!
Feel free also to bring that with Apple, maybe they will listen to your feedback? After all, you purchased a specific hardware, I would be interested to see Apple's official answer on them preventing you to use that hardware as you want...
Hope that clarifies the situation!
