On Tue, 22 Dec 2020 at 14:43, S Bob <sbob@quadratum-braccas.com> wrote:
Hi;


I have a contract with a client and they have sent me a mac (ugh).

<rant>

I thought it would be ok since I mostly spend my time at the command
line but the mac OS is driving me crazy. I hate this thing more with
every passing day, it's like using a preschool toy to do real work. The
mac interface is the worst pain I've had to endure in a long time.
Literally the only good thing I can say about it is that it's not
windows. Even simple tasks like getting it to use a second monitor with
the laptop lid closed take way more time than it should and usually end
in frustration and a t least one reboot.

Recent macOS has locked down the OS by making many system files
read-only, and other measures to prevent and detect changes.  My
former workplace moved from SGI IRIX64 to macOS when SGI failed,
but the last version I used was El Capitan.   Our use cases were 
mostly command-line plus Adobe Photoshop and a couple big
remote sensing applications from ESA and NASA.  Those used a Java
GUI which was pretty much the same on linux, macOS, and Windows.

macOS uses BSD utilities, which often have different options than
linux.   There are several package systems that let you install open
source tools: macports, homebrew, and fink.  I used macports and 
found it offered advantages over linux (we were still on RHEL 5 when
I retired) mainly because it had recent versions that weren't available
on RH.   Macports had a large and active user community. 
 
</rant>


So... they will let me run VMware and I have installed Fedora 30 in a
VM. However much of the content I need to access such as mail, internal
company web pages, etc are all accessed via a cisco VPN and a usb key I
use to log in. Is there any way for me to fire up my Fedora VM and have
all of it's access just 'pass through' to the host, including using the
cisco vpn?

If your VM uses NAT for network access it should work with Cisco VPN.
Years ago there were some issues with DNS and Ubuntu VM's:
https://community.cisco.com/t5/vpn/anyconnect-3-1-04072-won-t-allow-internet-connectivity-from/td-p/2400378

You should note that macOS provides an ancient version of bash, but has a current zsh.   Macports
did have a current bash.

--
George N. White III