Does anyone really dual boot OSs anymore? Most folks just run virtual machines, rather than have a 2nd OS installed on the hard disk. Better that way, given that you can run your 2nd OS at the same time as the ‘primary’.
This does stink though. For whatever reason, certain users may NEED to dual boot, and the option should be there.
This isn’t just for dual boots. It’s wired into the firmware, so the system wouldn’t be able to boot Linux *at all*.
Dual booting isn’t the main issue, it is that you wouldn’t be able to install a different OS on a “windows” box. You possibly wouldn’t be able to take your old Dell, and install linux to turn it into a media server, for example.
I dual boot AND run several virtual machines. I prefer running some things natively for the comparative performance advantages you get.
I don’t see this new boot loader getting much traction. Even if it does, it will be reverse engineered just like other closed Microsoft specifications (ntfs read/write modules as an example come to mind). This is what the open source community does very well — frustrate the makers of closed specifications. There is, however, some lag time in development.
To be clear this would be horrible. That said I bet the LINUX crowd finds a hack, fix, workaround, whatever I bet they break it. And yes I run a dual boot on separate drives.
The option IS there.
Watch this video on Windows 8 boot process from Microsoft themselves:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anxyxlMWCXM
You should know better than trust the tabloid, gutter journalism from the notorious British site “The Register”.