Posted on 03/24/2015 7:52:28 AM PDT by ShadowAce
Remember the most talked about story of 2014? It was Microsoft loves Linux. It looks like Microsoft’s love for Linux is more like Mark Wahlberg’s love for Reese Witherspoon as we saw in the movie Fear.
If reports are to be trusted Microsoft’s survival mechanism may kick in again, with the new release of Windows. The legacy software maker may resort to ‘secure boot’ to block alternative operating systems on Windows PCs.
At Microsoft’s hardware conference WinHEC, new slides were shown which could mean bad news for Linux users. Machines shipping with Windows 10 may see OEMs enforcing Secure Boot without an option to disable the ‘feature’ meaning any operating system that the user wants to install will need to be digitally signed before Secure Boot will allow it to be installed, Red Hat had to pay for the privilege of getting Fedora signed.
Earlier on in the week it was revealed that Microsoft were going to release ROMs that can be installed on a selection of Chinese Android phones, namely the Xiaomi line-up. It now appears that Microsoft isn’t content with tackling Linux head-on with custom ROMs but has dragged up the fears over Secure Boot again.
With the advent of Windows 8, advocates of Free and Open Source software became worried over Microsoft’s secure boot functionality which was potentially going to prevent people from loading up a different OS on their system other than Windows, after the launch of the machines with Secure Boot the worry more or less went away as users were free to disable secure boot.
The slides pertaining to the secure boot implementation shipping with Windows 10 however have brought back the fears we had three years ago. The slide states ‘Win10 Desktop: It’s OEM option whether to allow end user to turn off Secure Boot’ and ‘Win10 Mobile: Must not allow secure boot to be turned off on retail device’, the latter statement regarding Windows Phone 10 is to be expected as Microsoft have never allowed users to install custom ROMs since Windows Phone 7, the reference to Windows 10 on Desktop however is worrying as it sets a new precedent where OEMs locking down tradition PCs become OK to do.
This news will affect users in the Linux community wildly differently. Some of the major Linux distributions such as Ubuntu managed to work with Microsoft to get signatures set up so that Ubuntu would be compatible with Secure Boot, however other distributions did not, most notably the GNU endorsed distributions. Use of GNU endorsed distros such as Trisquel is usually reserved to die-hard free software advocates who do not mind giving up some convenience in exchange for all the source code.
If Microsoft’s stance on this issue is not reversed it’s possible we will see a spike in sales by manufacturers such as System76 and ZaReason who ship computers running Linux out of the box without any signs of Secure Boot at all.
It’s also worth noting, if you do decide to buy a computer from the Windows 10 era make sure to do your homework and find out whether OEMs have disabled your ability to install the software you want on a device you own.
Good ol’ Microsoft. If you can’t control it, break it.
GRRRRRRRRRRRR
No worries here mate.
DOS isn’t done until Lotus won’t run.
Some things never change...
I purchased a laptop for the sole purpose of using a linux based program. I had to return the laptop with windows 8.1 and uefi because I couldnt get linux in. I exchanged it for a different laptop with windows 7. Supposedly getting linux running was possible but I couldn’t do it
Btw... saying linux to me is like.saying niagara falls to curly
Only one thing though: this only affects a very small minority of users. Most computer users will only have one operating system on the hard drive, if only to free up disk space (many Linux distributions can use up tens to gigabytes of disk space just for the operating system and the free apps that come along with it).
Is that a whizzy wig thing?
So, is this Secure Boot a function of the hard drive, or the chipset on the MoBo?
M4L linux
It’s a deliberate cultural imperative to block competitors’ software from territory claimed by microsoft.
Sorta like muslims keep out Jews, Christians and Pagans...
I have not tried it yet ,but I was told to get EasyBCD
It’s a function of the chipset on the motherboard, I believe.
Both superior Operating Systems to any concurrent version of Windows.
The latter, I believe. UEFI was touted as a more secure alternative to the ancient BIOS chip.
This is weird, but to run Linux on a W8 machine you can use the beta of W10 to delete the partitions (and hidden elements of BitLocker). Once W10 does this stop the W10 install and then install what you want. One of my very close friends did this on an HP 820g1 laptop and I got to see it done.
Thanks. That was my suspicion. I’m planning on doing a Linux build in the near future to replace my 10 year old desktop, so I guess I’ll have to be extra careful about selecting components.
I’d really like to know which linux distro’s those are.
I run OpenSuSE and my OS footprint is less than 1.5G (that is including Libre, extra drivers, and lots of productivity apps for work. I also run a windows 7 vm for work (so it has to be fully patched) and it is clocking in at 15G. The VM eats more drive space than my bare metal linux installation.
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