Eduroam installation on Linux

Unfortunately, the University of Helsinki helpdesk instructions on how to install Eduroam on Linux are outdated and wrong. Here is how to do it...

This morning it took me an hour to get Eduroam working. Eduroam is the international WLAN roaming service for university students and staff. I brought in my (non-university managed) laptop to work and tried to get connected. I finally found the instructions on the IT Helpdesk site on place place 19 (from 21 results shown on the first page when searching for "Eduroam Linux"): https://helpdesk.it.helsinki.fi/en/instructions/logging-and-connections… As usual, the instructions are from many years back and do not work anymore on a "recent" system such as Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. On top of this, I had some old, dysfunctional Eduroam settings lingering around from a previous failed attempt. In order to make it work, I had to do the following things:

  1. Modify the installer script to make run at all (you need to change the first line of the installer stript changing "python" into "python3"
  2. Delete my pre-existing configuration by going to WiFi settings > Eduroam > Forget
  3. Remove the directory ~/.cat_installer

If you had multiple failed attempts, it might also be a good idea to restart your networking (or simply reboot your computer after doing the above additional steps). When I encounter outdated or wrong information on the IT Helpdesk site, I occasionally respond to the offer "How would you improve these instructions" by giving feedback, hoping to save others some time. However, during the last 5 years, I have never received any other answer except something like the following:

We have processed your support request "Feedback form for the Helpdesk instructions portal". Actions: Sadly, we have very limited resources. We are constantly improving the Helpdesk site, but adding instructions for this case exceeds our possibilities.