[ronnietherocket3]

That’s not what is happening here. MS has made a deal with chip makers whereby chips will not function with anything other than a MS product.

This is not true; the only Windows product that will be supported is Win10. Linux and Apple products will work. It makes utterly no sense for Intel to adopt a strategy like this. It would help them nowhere and would piss off a large percentage of their users who write code that runs in Linux and needs the latest CPU features to run quickly. The only thing it would accomplish would be to push more HPC from CPU to GPU.

[Ray76]

I wouldn’t be so sure.

If the chip is licensed to OEM’s who are contractually required to install only Windows on systems built around this chip then any systems built with the chip will only load Windows and there is nothing you can do about it. UEFI, Secure Boot, and Trusted Platform Module, together make it possible.

If the chip is licensed to OEM’s who are not contractually required to install only Windows on systems built with the chip, then other OSs can be installed

The capability exists, what is available depends on Microsoft’s & Intel’s licenses and contracts between themselves and system builders (HP, Dell, etc).