Slashdot Mirror
UEFI Secure Boot and Linux: Where Things Stand
itwbennett writes "Assuming that Microsoft doesn't choose to implement Secure Boot in the ways that the Linux Foundation says would work with Linux, there 'will be no easy way to run Linux on Windows 8 PCs,' writes Steven Vaughan-Nichols. Instead, we're faced with three different, highly imperfect approaches: Approach #1: Create UEFI Secure Boot keys for your particular distribution, like Canonical is doing with Ubuntu. Approach #2: work with Microsoft's key signing service to create a Windows 8 system compatible UEFI secure boot key, like Red Hat is doing with Fedora."
itwbennet finishes with: "Approach #3: Use open hardware with open source software, an approach favored by ZaReason CEO Cathy Malmrose." When you can't even use a GPLv3 licensed bootloader to boot your system, you might have a problem. Why is everyone so quick to accept the corpse of TCPA in new clothes?
if ntldr is modified, it won't pass the hash check and the UEFI loader won't execute it.
In the past, I would have agreed with you, but hardware DRM is getting pretty good:
PS3s took almost five years to get cracked, and new PS3s are immune to any holes in them that were used by GeoHot to bust the thing open in the first place.
Satellite TV has not seen any cracks since the patch several years back which completely fried any "master key" cards.
The iPhone 4s is barely jailbroken with only userland available. This is with the best minds in the world working on cracking the thing.
Most Android phones still have locked bootloaders, which nobody has yet been able to get. Newer Android phones actually have a daemon that looks for root process signatures then "bricks" the phone if found until the firmware is reflashed... and with some devices, the reflash is not available to the public.
So, even though hardware might be in the user's physical control, it nowhere near belongs to the user.
Ever install Vista or Win7?
Yes. I bought this laptop I'm using a couple of months ago. It dual-boots Win7 and openSUSE 12.1, both of which I installed myself.
Boot the disk, answer a couple of questions, the installer does the rest...
First question: Does it have all your device drivers?
essentially imaging the system to a clean install for a computer that doesn't have Windows installed.
With none of those applications you go on about.
Linux in orders of magnitude more difficult to install...
With apologies to any equines who may be in the audience, that's complete and utter horseshit. To quote your own fine self, installing a modern Linux distro is a case of "Boot the disk, answer a couple of questions, the installer does the rest".
...not to mention all the 0.x unfinished apps for supposed Windows app substitutes.
What Windows apps? You mean the apps *for* Windows that don't actually *come* with Windows that you have to find (and possibly *buy*) and install separately? As opposed to the hundreds (thousands?) of perfectly usable apps available in any halfway respectable Linux distro that you can load as part of the OS installation?
BTW, the installation of Windows 7 Pro and about a dozen applications which had to be obtained and installed separately (following the OS installation) took almost exactly *twice* as long as as the openSUSE installation, which provided *everything* I need for both personal and work use with just 2 exceptions--Skype, and a proprietary app we use at work.
Oh, and let's not forget cost: the Windows 7 Pro OEM DVD (English) ran me about 1350 SEK (call it US$200); the blank CD on which I burned the Linux network installer was about a dollar and a half (~10 SEK).
TL;DR: Windows took twice as much time to install, cost me 200 times as much money, and provided about 10% of the software.
So... You are badly misinformed, deluded, or just plain lying. I'd say it's a bit of all 3.
What is it with you guys, anyway, that you find Linux so threatening that you have to resort to spewing garbage like this about it?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.