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@BarbaraHudson: 'Yet another report that doesn't give hard numbers either in the summary or the article. And of course, the pdf is walled behind a "give us your information and we'll let you download it" page.'

If you haven't downloaded it, how do you know it doesn't gave any hard numbers. Besides, you can fill in any ole name and download it.

Key findings from the 2015 Linux Jobs Survey and Report show that:

"The 2015 Linux Jobs Report reveals and analyzes the responses from more than 1,000 hiring managers at corporations, small and medium businesses (SMBs), government organizations, and staffing agencies across the globeâ"as well as responses from more than 3,400 Linux professionals worldwide."

@BarbaraHudson: "I doubt we will ever have an unbiased set of numbers to work with - that would require someone who doesn't have a vested interest in the outcome."

Yes - of course - you're absolutely right - the Linux foundation obviously have a hidden agenda here ..

Iproute2 has worked out very well for me for a quite a long time and I have no need to run any additional routing daemons.

Linux has 2,000 new developers and gets 10,000 patches for each version Linux recently saw "busiest development cycle" in its history.
The new developers are helping fuel an ever-bigger Linux community, according to the latest Linux Kernel Development report, which will
be released today by the Linux Foundation. The report is expected to be available at THIS LINK .

This is exactly the kind of thing Core Infrastructure Initiative is meant to help with and I'm happy to see it being used for gpg. Anyone with an underfunded Open Source project that is in wide use can apply for a grant from http://www.linuxfoundation.org.... There's no need to wait until you are in dire straits.

Lots of funny comments here. What I was really hoping for was some informative comments on the state of the world in terms of managing Platform Keys. The last I read was in 2011 http://www.linuxfoundation.org...

I've heard from people who work with QNX that it has plenty of bugs.

Well that settles it then! QNX is total crap.
That's why over 50% of the cars rolling off the assembly line today come with it installed.

I prefer the philosophy of right tool for the job. And QNX for now is the best choice for auto makers. I use Linux where it makes sense and when AGL matures it might become the best tool for the job. But don't expect auto makers to jump on it if they can't control it.

Well, ifconfig on Linux hasn't had a release since 2001, and is considered deprecated by the Linux devs. Some distributions provide its former functionality via iproute2, which is sort of a successor. However it's pretty low-level. In some environments (esp. servers sitting in a colo) it's perfectly fine. It tends not to do what people expect from a network stack on movable devices though: saved wifi networks and wifi autoconnect, sane management of hotpluggable interfaces, etc. For that, you need some kind of wrapper around it, which is what network-management daemons provide (in varying forms).

iirc Automotive Linux [ http://automotive.linuxfoundat... ] is HTML5/Javascript on the frontend...

Implying the Windows driver model is flawless.

Not at all, there are also many points where the Linux model is better : http://www.linuxfoundation.org...
I think that it is related to the monolithic vs microkernel debate. Each model has its pros and cons, and a lot of potential for flamewars too.

I looked it up and here is what I found: http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/technical-advisory-board-tab/linuxdevicedrivermodel

Quite an interesting read, if you ask.

the biggest problem with the Windows model is that stable device driver ABIs do not actually remain stable. Microsoft has modified the Windows ABI in every Windows release, resulting in a relentless succession of hardware support issues. Any change in the ABI can cause hardware to stop working correctly, and can even crash the entire OS. Fixing the problems requires IHVs to rewrite to the newest ABI, but updated drivers can take years to be released. Some IHVs have decided not to support Vista drivers for older hardware at all, in order to force users into purchasing upgrades. And every new Windows release (even service packs) provides new opportunities for driver failures.

As PC World recently pointed out: "Microsoft's debacle with Windows Vista device drivers malfunctioning after an upgrade to Service Pack 1 is an expected, almost inevitable result of the strategic path it took with Windows' initial release more than two decades ago."

So yes, sometimes you have driver that limit themselves to some part of Win ABI and work fine for 20 years, and sometimes not ...

Not saying that Linux shouldn't give it a try, maybe you're right, it might be a good idea (hint: "every other OS has one so Linux should have one to be a good OS" is not a valid argument. Look up "non sequitur"). Just straightening some facts.

Linus Torvalds is paid by the Linux Foundation to work on Linux kernel development full-time.

Here's a list of who funds the Linux Foundation: http://www.linuxfoundation.org...

Do you think all those companies are irrational?

The reason is, that Xen is a Linux Foundation project and Amazon AWS uses Xen:
http://www.linuxfoundation.org...

Amazon Web Services can be found on the list of Linux Foundation patrons, which means that they help to assure that open source projects get the appropriate funding that they sorely need. I don't know about you, but that's a big plus in my book.

The first link in the article is for The Linux Foundation, who have been publishing the same report since at least 2008, when a minimum of 70% of the contributors (including people who submitted one-line fixes) had corporate sponsorship. Even before then it is easy to see who the top contributors to Linux were -- Kernel maintainer Alan Cox was employed by Red Hat from 1999 to 2009. Ted Ts'o worked with MIT, VA Linux and IBM while he developed /dev/random and the ext2 file system. John "Mad Dog" Hall was the man responsible for making Alpha the second architecture Linux ran on while he worked with Digital. Prior to his employment with Transmeta and the Linux Foundation, Linus Torvalds was paid $20,000,000 in stock options by Red Hat and VA Linux.

Even before the majority of kernel development was done with corporate sponsorship, it was done to further academic goals. While not every one of these people is a dot com millionaire for their work with Linux, calling it a product of slave labour is disingenuous at best.

Mentioned in the FAQ:

http://www.linuxfoundation.org...

For the lazy:

Why is The Linux Foundation the right forum for this funding?

The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit organization with strong, existing relationship throughout the technology industry. It marshals the resources of the Linux ecosystem and other innovative open source projects to provide much needed services that are not easily offered by a single community member, entity or company. By raising funds at a neutral organization like The Linux Foundation, the industry can effectively give projects the support they need while ensuring that open source projects retain their independence and community-based dynamism.

Basically what you want is to escalate this issue so that it gets more attention. As this affects people with disabilities I suspect you may get some results if you try to contact the Linux Foundation, who may then be able to twist a few arms or throw some resources at the problem as needed. You could, for example, point this very thread out to "pr@linuxfoundation.com" and let them know that this is a bit of a black eye against Linux.

If it is this course
http://training.linuxfoundatio...
which is going to be released for free, IMO it doesn't target Einsteins, but it is not completely devoted to morons.
And $2400 is way too much for what it teaches.

Can the Linux Foundation set up a definition where things just have to be in certain locations, regardless of distro, and certain commands that just have to work, regardless of distro?

like lsb?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86_calling_conventions#cdecl

Doesn't this count?

It's an x86 calling convention (as the article says), not a generic calling convention for C for all architectures, as "blah blah blah is not a standard C parameter passing method" would speak of. There's no generic convention for passing parameters in C, there are only specific conventions for passing them on particular architectures, and most of those conventions do pass parameters in registers, although not all do (somewhat to my surprise, S/390 also passes parameters in registers), so x86, along with some rather old ISAs such as PDP-11, VAX, 68k, etc., may be the only ones that never pass parameters in registers, so "Passing in registers is not a standard C parameter passing method" is complete bullshit.

"ABI" - Application Binary Interface. Linux has a stable ABI

No, not for kernel modules it doesn't and that's obviously what we are talking about here. The lack of a stable ABI for kernel modules is also the reason why version information is stored in modinfo and a kernel module only loaded if it matches the running kernel.

"Application" being the operative word here... noticeably inapplicable to drivers and only tangentially related to HAL.

You're taking that too literally, this document may help you gain a better understanding of this subject.

Stop spreading ridiculous myths:

"Yes, that's the conventional wisdom with open-source. But tell me: when was the last time you went inspect the code deep in the kernel? "

From the latest Linux Foundation report: Kernel: 2.6.30 Number od developers: 1,150 Number of known companies: 240

3,300 eyes is a lot of eyes (apologies to any kernel devs who have lost an eye or are blind.) And that is only the count of the actual contributors. There are many more who look at it, and write code for it, that don't submit their code at all, or don't have their code accepted into the kernel proper.

Before you make such a ridiculous statement, please learn about the Linux Kernel development process. Nothing, and I mean nothing gets into the kernel without highly skilled devs reviewing it first. Sure, they could make a mistake, but saying that it might happen because nobody is really looking is ridiculous.

I am afraid a backdoor is not something you would find drirectly in the kernel. It could be a complilation of exploits yet unknown or build in by purpose but not recognized . And of course there are lots of binairy blobs build by firms who could be compromized.
You do nog really think the NSA would forget linux, on of the OS ses they have lots of knowledge about. SELINUX anyone..

"Yes, that's the conventional wisdom with open-source. But tell me: when was the last time you went inspect the code deep in the kernel? "

From the latest Linux Foundation report: Kernel: 2.6.30 Number od developers: 1,150 Number of known companies: 240

3,300 eyes is a lot of eyes (apologies to any kernel devs who have lost an eye or are blind.) And that is only the count of the actual contributors. There are many more who look at it, and write code for it, that don't submit their code at all, or don't have their code accepted into the kernel proper.

Before you make such a ridiculous statement, please learn about the Linux Kernel development process. Nothing, and I mean nothing gets into the kernel without highly skilled devs reviewing it first. Sure, they could make a mistake, but saying that it might happen because nobody is really looking is ridiculous.

Can LLVM's Clang build the Linux kernel and QT/KDE?

I would love to have a Linux system,(not android), completely free of GNU.

http://llvm.linuxfoundation.org/index.php/Main_Page

They are getting close to building the Linux kernel according to these slides.

These slides? Which slides? Your link cannot be understood without hovering over it with mouse.

Can LLVM's Clang build the Linux kernel and QT/KDE?

They are getting close to building the Linux kernel according to these slides. Qt has been able to use Clang for a long time now, but I don't know about the entire KDE.

Some kings probably spent resources on hiring wizards to cast magic spells to protect their castles and curse their enemies. To say the least, this was probably not cost effective.

Modern spells like "Authorized Use Only" and curses like "Full extent of the law" are nearly as effective, especially when obtained from and managed by a lowest bidder wizard. Not all wizards are created equal ;)

Well one thing you can do is use an open source operating system. It isn't going to be 100% secure (nothing is), but at least the source code has millions of eyes on it looking for holes, and you aren't reliant on some central authority to make fixes available after the NSA is done exploiting them.

Yes, this is an excellent suggestion and one of the most reasonable responses to the attack we're under. A thing about these millions of eyes is they are millions of unqualified and non-programmer eyes. The domain specific talent required is supplied mainly by commercial companies, each with their own agendas. I understand the sentiment and even with opensource you're still running it on someone else's hardware, even if you paid for it and possess it you do not own it.

Even if the NSA has proof that a guy hacked into a computer to become student president of a state college, they aren;t going to allow this info to be used in a trial.

Initially you mentioned cost, that it's "expensive" and my point was that the system is already in place and is paid for (by us, also those fees that get tacked on to cellphone bills) and seeing use. Compared to the cost of the network, the $20 million USD annually, it's cheap just like storage space. I'll give you another comparison, Youtube (estimated) costs $2 million USD to operate daily. Location information with handsets specifically is a byproduct of the system; see the value of accurate billing information. The way this guy "hacked things" was done locally with keyloggers negating the need to snoop on traffic. No need for the NSA, just simple admin work.

I think a world where 0 day exploits are rampant is preferable to one where all these holes exist but are yet to be discovered. Even if the bad guys find them first, the good guys can usually know shortly after.

"Bad" guys finding them first would be hackers, no? Is it only bad when hackers sell them to others? Or is it when they don't tell people about them? Or is it only when they're exploited? Wouldn't supporting one of these companies where you buy 0days make you complicit in supporting the "bad" people thus making you one of the "bad" even if you're doing it for the perceived greater good?

Open source software both benefits from as well as helps further for-profit endeavors.

From: http://go.linuxfoundation.org/who-writes-linux-2012
Page 9: "over 75% of all [Linux] kernel development is demonstrably done by developers who are being paid for their work."

Open source software may be an example of something that is open to the masses, but many well known open source projects wouldn't be what they are today without enormous support from corporate interests. These corporations aren't contributing to these development efforts purely out of the goodness of their hearts. Neither would most of these corporations survive if they made all of their goods and services freely available to the public.

By the way...
Page 1: "For the first time ever, Microsoft appeared in the list of the top-20 contributors for a kernel release."

Great rant, except that over 75% of the Linux code contributed is contributed by paid corporate employees that are simply doing their job.

Supporting evidence for this assertion:

"It is worth noting that, even if one assumes that all of the “unknown” contributors were working on their own time, over 75% of all kernel development is demonstrably done by developers who are being paid for their work."

Corbet, Jonathan, Greg Kroah-Hartman, and Amanda McPherson. Linux Kernel Development: How Fast it is Going, Who is Doing It, What They are Doing, and Who is Sponsoring It . San Francisco: Linux Foundation, March 2012. 9.

"As we all know Oracle is not the biggest friend to the Open Source Community." This is a bit weasely. We all don't know any such thing. For example, Oracle was in the top ten of organisations that contributed code to Linux last year: http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/announcements/2012/04/linux-foundation-releases-annual-linux-development-report Since then it has been very public with Oracle Linux, and made several large contributions from that front. Shucks, it's even got its own OSS portal: https://oss.oracle.com/ I'm happy to agree it's a big bad corporate beast and does a lot of wrong in the world, but if you're going to criticize it, at least be factual.

And I still do not understand how Microsoft get to control this.

Secure Boot became part of the UEFI spec in 2008-2009. (Rev 2.2)

The spec is managed by the UEFI Forum --- representing AMD, American Megatrends, Apple, Dell, HP, IBM, Insyde Software, Intel, Lenovo, Microsoft, and Phoenix Technologies. Unified EFI Forum

The Linux Foundation posted a "Power Point" presentation in October 2011: Making UEFI Secure Boot Work With Open Platforms

It comes down to this:

To successfully implement hardware level security in a mass market consumer product, it has to be enabled by default. The geek knows this is true, even if he doesn't like the implications.

Microsoft isn't going to yield on this point ---

and the geek has no leverage.

The OEM market for the x86 UEFI motherboard is OSX and Windows.

While in practice the pragmatics of the situation are that you are right, in principal I believe that we should be talking to the anti-trust authorities - both sides of the Atlantic - because this is very clear abuse of monopoly. Unless, of course, Microsoft irrevocably commits to authorise any version of any competing operating system for free, in which case the whole point of secure boot has just vanished.

UEFI and Secure Boot are not backed by Microsoft alone.

The Unified EFI Forum or UEFI Forum (where UEFI stands for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) is an alliance between several leading technology companies to modernize the booting process. The board of directors includes representatives from eleven "Promoter" companies: AMD, American Megatrends, Apple, Dell, HP, IBM, Insyde Software, Intel, Lenovo, Microsoft, and Phoenix Technologies.

Unified EFI Forum

Secure Boot was introduced in v. 2.2 of the UEFI spec,. ca. 2008-2009.

The geek feels ambushed and pole-axed by a technology that has been in development for over five years. But if he had been paying attention he would known this was coming. Unified Extensible Firmware Interface

''Secure boot'' is a technology described by recent revisions of the UEFI specification; it offers the prospect of a hardware-verified, malware-free operating system bootstrap process that can improve the security of many system deployments. Linux and other open operating systems will be able to take advantage of secure boot if it is implemented properly in the hardware.

Making UEFI Secure Boot Work With Open Platforms

Tizen has nothing in common with Maemo or MeeGo.

"There has been a lot of great work done in the Meego project, and we are pleased to see that code carried over to Tizen." - Imad Sousa (Meego’s technical steering group co-leader)

Its Samsung's internal Linux platform

If by internal you mean it is maintained by the Linux Foundation then OK.

The motherboard didn't even have a PCI slot (ASUS P8H61-M LX) and not a single local vendor had a PCI-E network card. I could have ordered one for more money than the motherboard cost.

I know how unusual it is to even imagine that the NIC would not be supported at least in some legacy 10 MBit mode, alas it was not. For some reason the driver is still not in the mainline kernel, see here:
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/networking/alx

Sad reality that people are shifting the blame as usual in Linux. Linux developers killed Linux, not Microsoft.

Sorry to pop your little bubble you live in, but netbooks never really took off. Nokia was already going down the drain and stupidly tried to create meego, pull your heads out of the sand.

Isn't it sad the only ones who are going to save Linux are corporations like Steam by bringing DRM gaming to it and corporations like Google who are making an actual Linux desktop. The open source community has failed in that aspect. Google corporation will make desktop Linux work not the open communitry, mark my words.
Please don't give me the "well Linux runs on billions of devices", well I am glad your stapler and toaster can run Linux. Is it not sad that people are looking forward to Android applications running on Linux and not Linux applications running on Linux.

Thank you for your post. Just to put it into to some kind of perspective. Linux is set to take over as lead *computing* OS in 2013 from Microsoft. In fact the success on mobile shows how Linux is capable of competing successfully [and winning] on an equal footing...and no they are not staplers [rolls eyes] they are the hot new computing devices in a growth market tablets/smartphones you may have heard of them. As for Nokia going down the drain its only fair to say that after Nokia chose Microsoft Windows Phone, Nokia has moved from Number 1 manufacturer of smartphones to tenth!?...and symbian smartshones still outsell windows smartphones.

You seem a little confused about corporate involvement in Linux. Linux has ALWAYS been about corporate involvement...in fact that is when it works best. According to the Linux foundation 75% of work is done by paid developers, and the top ten companies are Red Hat, Intel, Novell, IBM, Texas Instruments, Broadcom, Nokia, Samsung, Oracle and Google [April this year] Microsoft appear at 17th place :) http://go.linuxfoundation.org/who-writes-linux-2012

User only needs to press a key during initial installation, after that it should boot unattended just fine: "If the user gives permission, the signature will be installed and loader.efi will then boot up without any present user tests on all subsequent occasions even after the platform is placed back into secure boot mode." http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/blogs/browse/2012/10/linux-foundation-uefi-secure-boot-system-open-source

So I won't have to go around to every classroom and every pc and click OK when I do my monthly wipe and reimage?

If I understand correctly, even reinstallation does not need user attention as long as loader.efi doesn't change. But that's based only on my reading of the article I quoted, so I could be wrong.

Does that mean the user has to actually be present to press a key? That renders secure boot unuseable on remote-admined or unattended servers, the very place you would most want to have a secure boot chain.

User only needs to press a key during initial installation, after that it should boot unattended just fine: "If the user gives permission, the signature will be installed and loader.efi will then boot up without any present user tests on all subsequent occasions even after the platform is placed back into secure boot mode." http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/blogs/browse/2012/10/linux-foundation-uefi-secure-boot-system-open-source

So I won't have to go around to every classroom and every pc and click OK when I do my monthly wipe and reimage?

Does that mean the user has to actually be present to press a key? That renders secure boot unuseable on remote-admined or unattended servers, the very place you would most want to have a secure boot chain.

User only needs to press a key during initial installation, after that it should boot unattended just fine: "If the user gives permission, the signature will be installed and loader.efi will then boot up without any present user tests on all subsequent occasions even after the platform is placed back into secure boot mode." http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/blogs/browse/2012/10/linux-foundation-uefi-secure-boot-system-open-source

Where are Oracle's testicles? Larry has a pussy? Oracle is sinking lower and lower? Normally someone stands up for the benefits which are given to them. In this case small-ball Larry or any of his sons appears to have abused their undersized gifts; it is known that small men with small penises tend to overdo their fits. The father of the chickens children with small-sized genitals should amend and rather help out - RedHat is no large enemy; it is not the Red Army. Microsoft is. Apple may become, and currently with far larger pockets than RedHat or Microsoft.

Spending corporate money on this? Oh, so let us read what they have say, shall we? At https://blogs.oracle.com/ksplice/entry/introducing_redpatch we can read:

"To understand why we've created this project we'll need a little history. In early 2011, Red Hat changed how they released their kernel source, going from a tarball that had individual patch files to shipping the kernel source as one giant tarball with a single patch for all Red Hat-introduced changes. For most people who work in the kernel this is merely an inconvenience; driver developers and other out-of-kernel module developers can see the end result to make sure their module still performs as expected."

Well, so they keep using RedHat's work, as all other do too, btw. But now, they break it out and make it more readily available to others. So, maybe the Larriones do have some pubertal indications after all.

Still, what does Oracle to for Linux, which makes them exempt for common courtesy?

Here is an two month old article http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/blogs/browse/2012/08/oracle-leading-linux-then-and-now

which argues that Oracle does a lot of things for Linux. Hmmm... Maybe there are more than five inches after all?

Still, at http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/oracles-new-kernel-rhel-clone-real-truth
we can read:

"Don't get me wrong, Oracle does contribute to kernel and other open source development. In fact, Oracle was one of the top 20 employers by kernel contributions from the 2.6.33 kernel (as measured by Greg Kroah-Hartman). Specifically, Oracle was responsible for about 1.3% of the changesets in 2.6.33, just after AMD with 1.6%, and kernel heavyweights Texas Instruments and Fujitsu (1.9% each), and Nokia (3.0%). It's far, far behind Red Hat's 11.6% and even IBM's 4.8%."

Ok, more than five, but not by much... Still, the backing is definitely supported by Larry Ellison - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4-5z5l2HjA

So, in summary, RedHat was at that time doing a lot more of changes, but pushed them out as solid patches, with little or effort to ease it for other users; and it appears to have been an effort to stall competitors like Oracle.

Where are Oracle's testicles? Between Larry's and his sons legs. Larry has a pussy? No.

This is business. Show me yours, I'll show you mine. Code, of course.

I'm shocked that you didn't know that Microsoft is the 17th largest contributor to the Linux kernel. I avoid Linux like the plague (FreeBSD on the laptop, OpenBSD everywhere else) and I knew that.

Azure (the MS cloud) now supports Linux images. They probably want some attention for that.

Yeah, it appears that they do: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/linuxcon-europe/schedule

http://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/join/corporate

Besides ensuring that your company’s investment in Linux is protected from a legal, technical and promotional perspective, there are many other benefits in joining the Linux Foundation as a Corporate Member.

The Benefits of Linux Foundation Membership

        The ability to participate in Linux Foundation member-only activities like the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit and Legal Summit to learn, influence and participate with the Linux Foundation workgroups
        The right to vote and run for Linux Foundation board seats and influence the direction of the organization
        Unsurpassed networking opportunities and a unique introductions service. Meet other Linux Foundation members and Linux users in small settings or get introduced to companies in a one-on-one fashion by Linux Foundation staff>
        Access to the Linux Foundation media network, including Linux.com. The Linux Foundation reaches 2 million users and developers a month through its online channels and newsletters and promotes members directly to these audiences
        Discounts on Linux training
        The right to participate in Linux Foundation member councils such as the Vendor and End User Councils and collaborate directly with the technical leaders of Linux
        Discounts for sponsoring LinuxCon, Linux Japan Symposium, The Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit and other Linux Foundation events. Members get priority at these events
        Logo listing on the Linux Foundation site and the ability to add a member logo to your site or marketing materials
        Exclusive member content, such as the Briefing Book, and one-on-one analyst briefings (depending on membership level) that keeps you up to date on the Linux market to make the most of your investment in Linux
        The ability to create workgroups and collaborate in a neutral setting to solve pressing Linux or open source issues
        Guidance on open source issues and using Linux in your products

The Individual Member Representative Bdale Garbee (Board Members) holds a "level 3" high power rocketry certification, the highest in the rocketry hobby. HP will get a bigger rocket and wins if we don't act quickly :(

Until Linux stops all their internal bickering and decides on one native standard for all gaming they will never been seen as better.

Here you go. Supported pretty much by all the major Linux distributions out of the box (with the exception of Gentoo, but Gentoo is pretty much anything out of the box).

. For Linux it's not that easy yet and 3% performance doesn't outweigh the headaches.

As a software developer who has worked with the Linux Standard Base and has worked on game type software, I'm not understanding the problem? Could you please explain to me how I didn't do it easily, thanks.

On yesterday's PCs, I could just write raw machine code in Hex, save it to the 1st sector of a drive, boot the disk and be in full control of my own hardware with my own code. Many new-ish PCs now use EFI. To boot from EFI I have to write my machine code within a FAT (32) container, which means implementing MS's proprietary and patent encumbered File Allocation Table format... Tomorrow's PCs will use UEFI to boot, which requires a cryptographically signed EFI boot process. That means signing my own bootloader and installing my own keys, or paying for a key for each bootable from MS (some UEFI systems allow booting w/o signature via special boot mode, some do not) -- On ARM platforms shipping Win RT, MS has said the option to boot unsigned code or install user specified keys must be removed.

So, you can see how it's slowly gotten a bit harder to play with my own new hardware thanks to the increasingly high hoops I've got to jump through. If Microsoft has their way you won't be able to boot any OS that doesn't fork over the cash to them. In fact, even the Linux Foundation is planning to pay MS for the right to sign a bootloader so you can still boot your own software on UEFI hardware. I think that's horrible. I understand they want to make it easy for users to run free software but IMO, paying MS one red cent to give us back the freedom to use our own software with our own hardware is just vile and disgusting. Instead, I'll buy from vendors that respect my freedom. The subject line say MS + Secure Boot == PC Death, but really Apple, and many other vendors who don't let us unlock our devices to run arbitrary code are equally as evil in my book.

Recently a longing for the good ol' days of unfettered computing led me to creating Hexabootable. It's a 512 byte boot sector that contains a Hex editor. With it you can edit raw memory then execute the memory you just edited. Using only this minimal tool you can extend the program's features (eg: disk I/O), write any other program, even create a whole new Operating System -- Indeed that's exactly what I'm doing.

None of my hardware or software hacking hobbies will be possible if the OEMs get their way and lock us out of our own hardware. It's all under the guise of Security, but that's not really the reason. Think about it: OS code is huge and bug ridden; If there's even one kernel level arbitrary code execution vulnerability then the whole effort is useless. If the OS makers could write secure (read: bug free) OS's they would be just as secure with and without secure boot! If they can't write secure OSs then secure boot is pointless! Truly, I can use known exploit vectors against every modern OS, secure boot or not, to run my own unsigned machine code, and so can malware writers... So it's not a boot for normal end user security, it's just digital shackles. The real reason Secure Boot Chains exists is to keep you from tampering with your own computer.

Now, what I do find hopeful is the cool work in the embedded systems fields. There are several projects that strive to be as transparent to the user as possible, and get their code up and running controlling everything. Unfortunately you don't always get to run plain machine code on all of the hobbyist devices. Open hardware initiatives give me a warm fuzzy feeling -- That's what will save the "PC" (Personal Computer) in my opinion. Protip: If you can't personalize the machine code and/or hardware, then it's really an Impersonal Computer -- An impostor of the worst kind...

Here's a fun aside: Since I write software in machine code, I could release it under the GPL and provide no other "source code" but the binaries :-P
Conversely, if you know Machine Code, every (non encrypted) binary executable is Open Source!

Europe's biggest claim to Linux is Linus Torvalds being a Finn, but he has moved to California in ~1996, and is now a US citizen. (I too am a naturalized US citizen, having been born in the USSR.)

The history of UNIX is rooted in AT&T research, and later corporate America, and simultaneously Berkeley, MIT (and I don't just mean that silly GNU hippie), and many other US universities. Top contributors to Linux are American corps! Many contributions also came from English-speaking countries that are culturally closer to US than the US-bashing continental Europeans. Open source projects get contributions from all over the world, but you'll find very few important FLOSS projects where European contributors dominate over North American ones.

So, if you want to make it a contest...

North America has Microsoft (still 83% of Web clients), oldest and most popular UNIXen (BSD's, MacOS X, Oracle's sunset, RedHat, etc), Commodore / AmigaOS, EMC / VMware, BeOS / Haiku, Plan9 from New Jersey, old IBM / HP / DR / Honeywell / Apple / Novell OS'es, etc, etc, etc.

Europe has Nokia, Amoeba, a few obscure UNIX-like systems (MINIX, my dear native U-NAS (Soviet BSD fork), etc), and of course Atari. (Did SAP or Ericsson ever make any noteworthy OS'es? Did I miss anything?)

The contrast is obvious.

The point is that USA (and other national champions of Economic Freedom, most of which speak English and are merely small satellites [topic.ref.pun] orbiting around USA) presently constitute the world's leading civilization, and the bulk of Europe is secondary in its aggregate merit, benefiting from diffusional ("trickle down") benefits of USA's achievements. There's nothing wrong with that, and USA has always acted benevolently toward the Europeans, but when you engage in America-bashing you are in contradiction of solid inescapable facts.

--libman

Here we go with the hyperbolics without even RTFA'ing. You can choose to install the key in the store when UEFI is in setup mode so that you don't see the prompt again.

http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/blogs/browse/2012/10/linux-foundation-uefi-secure-boot-system-open-source

Or just fricking turn off secure boot.

This kind of thing already exists:
1. The Linux Standard Base (LSB) has the goal of creating a standard set of libraries that you can code against that will be available on almost any Linux box.
2. SDL, which works on a wide varieties of Linux, as well as Windows and MacOS.

Thank you for adding some facts to this Intel-bash-fest. The CloverTrail processor was designed with Microsoft specifically for Windows 8. That's like saying that if Logitech makes a left-handed trackball, they are anti right hand.

Intel isn't anti-Linux. Intel has been one of the biggest contributors to Linux for the past decade.

"The top 10 organizations sponsoring Linux kernel development since the last report (or Linux kernel 2.6.36) are Red Hat, Intel, Novell, IBM, Texas Instruments, Broadcom, Nokia" ref: http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/announcements/2012/04/linux-foundation-releases-annual-linux-development-report

My kingdom for mod points...

Linux already has a stable ABI. It's called the Linux Standard Base. It's only weaknesses are

1. Debian and derivatives need to use extra tools like alien to install LSB RPM packages, and many RPMs do weird things that alien can't handle. Since most packagers likely don't test for LSB compliance, it's hard to say whether this is a fault of the packagers or of alien itself.
2. The list of libs that the LSB requires that every system have is much smaller than desktop developers would like to have. It might be a good idea to add a desktop specific extension to the standard. It would need to be optional, so non-desktop users aren't subjected to it.

Nice try, but the breaching of the kernel.org website had no bearing on the integrity of the kernel sources.