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?

Comments

approach #4

[Cyko_01]

Modify ntldr to boot to grub automatically and and remove all unnecessary windows components

Re:approach #4

[epyT-R]

if ntldr is modified, it won't pass the hash check and the UEFI loader won't execute it.

Re:Approach #4

[0123456]

Yes, because Microsoft would never, ever, even possibly ever imagine thinking of making it compulsory on x86.

Re:Approach #4

[ozmanjusri]

You need to do more with a computer than just smile smugly and say "i'm runng xyz cool thing". ... Okay.. maybe *you* don't...

Ah, my little troll is back! Nice to see you again.

And you're right. Computers are tools, they are at their best when they're used to create cool (and mundane) things, and that's the subtle difference between smartphones and desktop computers that I think Ubuntu got right this time.

You see my little pet, despite what many people say, phones and tablets aren't for passive consumption, that's the role of TV, books, and maybe e-readers. What Android, iOS et al excel at is to communicate and share cool things (and mundane things, but who wants to talk about those).

The thing is, computing as a field is all about thresholds. There were text and math thresholds as CPUs/memory etc became large enough and powerful enough to run text editors, then a little faster for word processors, spreadsheets and simulators. Graphical display thresholds gave us GUIs, sound subsystem thresholds and video playback thresholds got us music and movies. There are people here who looked in awe at early Amiga/Atari demos playing two or three simultaneous animations. Desktop computer hardware stopped being a limitation to creating images, video, text, music etc in the late '90s. Phone hardware now is far past that threshold and is about to pass the capabilities of desktop computers from less than a decade ago.

Coincidentally, a decade ago was when mainstream OS development stagnated. XP was released about then, and continues to be used in business today largely because its successors do little or nothing to improve productivity. You see where I'm going with this, cherub? We have hardware with enough power to run the content creation software and fit in our pockets. That limitation is gone. The remaining limitations are the OS and software stacks, and the peripherals - big screens, digitisers, scanners etc etc, and guess what? Ubuntu has an answer.

We're seeing enough hints in the market from the likes of Asus, Samsung, Lenovo and even Microsoft that this is something the world's looking for. I'd say Canonical/Ubuntu is in a very good place right now.

Re:approach #4

[SuricouRaven]

Depends on the design of the new NTLDR. If they are going to the effort of having the firmware validate the loader, I'm guessing that the loader in turn will only boot a microsoft-signed kernel.

Aproach #4

[sapgau]

Lawsuit?

Re:yes and no

[FudRucker]

i prefer option 3 too, but...
microsoft wont go out of business but they could very easily marginalize themselves to the point that they are no longer the 800 pound gorilla of the desktop PC market, and more than likely Apple and Linux will grab more userbase, i prefer old school distros like debian & slackware so apple wont be getting any of my money

Restrict Government PC Purchases to Open Hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems like the obvious way to block this type of stuff is to pass legislation requiring government agencies to only purchase PCs that are free from such encumbrances. The state and taxpayers benefit from keeping their OS options open on new computer hardware and more importantly they represent a large enough percent of total sales to actually get a proper response from manufacturers.

Secure Boot won't catch on

[billcopc]

Approach #4: ignore UEFI Secure Boot. It's a blunt solution to an obscure problem. More importantly, it's such a huge pain in the ass, not just for Linux but for ALL system integrators, that anyone actually preventing the user from disabling Secure Boot will end up limiting their own marketability. Two things will happen:

1. It will be relegated to tiny niches where security trumps usability
2. It will be cracked

This is not an either/or. Both things will happen. This whole fiasco is nothing but a huge waste of time for everyone involved.

Re:Secure Boot won't catch on

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Secure Boot won't catch on

[FranTaylor]

We used to call them "general purpose computers"

We dropped the "general purpose" part at some point, because it seemed redundant at the time.

Now maybe we need to bring back this term.

These machines you are talking about are not "general purpose" computers at all.

It once again goes to show that the Microsoft slogan is "Where do you want to be taken today"

Re:Secure Boot won't catch on

[tlhIngan]

Approach #4: ignore UEFI Secure Boot. It's a blunt solution to an obscure problem. More importantly, it's such a huge pain in the ass, not just for Linux but for ALL system integrators, that anyone actually preventing the user from disabling Secure Boot will end up limiting their own marketability.

I thought the requirement to run Windows 8 was to have a BIOS option to disable secure boot, or rather, enable legacy (BIOS) booting. So if the user wishes to run another OS, they could - disable secure boot, and the PC boots like it always has - via the old BIOS method. Of course, if you want to boot back into Windows requires flipping the option back (the files are signed and verified before loading, so it's not like running another OS will break the security - the UEFI verifies the loader, the loader verifies the kernel, the kernel verifies the drivers and Windows binaries, etc.).

I know RedHat and Canonical were worried that the option would be well, optional, but I thought it was now required. And it will be for a little while because Windows 7 isn't ready for secure boot - it can be EFI-booted in 64-bit mode but that's experimental.

Then there is well, Apple. Whose EFI-based firmware probably doesn't have secure boot in it and thus unable to boot Windows 8... (and probably the only provider that has an easily-accessible EFI boot - is there any other reason why there's an EFI bootloader for Linux for the past few years?)

Re:Secure Boot won't catch on

[Arancaytar]

It once again goes to show that the Microsoft slogan is "Where do you want to be taken today"

"Guess where we'll be taking you today."

Re:Secure Boot won't catch on

[jameshofo]

This is _not_ DRM, its a security implementation to prevent malware from writing to the boot processes and preempting any possible Operating System security. It does seem a bit like we're trying to right the leaning tower of pizza with a bomb on the low side to see if it will right itself again!

I'm sorry to be so obvious but this needs to be kept far away from the association of DRM.

Here is a rather awesome talk about UEFI and RedHat's work on it. Basically his experience was its very buggy and there are already implementations of it out there that they aren't even going to try to patch. At some point this just seems like a way for some company to add in just one more bit of junkware/middleware that everyone has to rely on and no one has any approving control over.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2aq5M3Q76U

Part of the spec says that it must have a disable option, the problem creeps up with inexperienced users who may have tried Linux/Unix or whatever that would usually be available seriously reducing the spread of *nix.

Re:Secure Boot won't catch on

[Thantik]

PS3s only took about 5 months to be cracked. They were initially untouched because they provided people what they wanted: The ability to boot linux. Once the feature was taken away, it was cracked in very little time at all.

And the new PS3s are "immune" not due to anything other than harassment of GeoHot by sony. We'll never know if this is true though, because he's barred from ever touching anything branded by Sony ever again.

And pretty much all Android phones have the bootloaders completely bypassed with 2ndinit.

Satellite, you've got me on, because I haven't had any interest in.

Re:Secure Boot won't catch on

[Yvanhoe]

The fact that mandatory secure boot is a windows 8 requirement for ARM architecture makes it credible to think they would like the same thing in the x86 world. The fact we even accepted in the ARM world is an incredibly sad defeat that will make us waste another 10 years to turn around.

Another Approach

[am 2k]

(Too many #4 here already, so I'll skip the numbering)

What about clustering all Linux enthusiasts' computers together and cracking Microsoft's signing key, SETI-style? I'm not sure about the mathematics there (taking longer than the galaxy will exist, etc.), but maybe it's possible. Or maybe somebody made a mistake and the key is much weaker than it is thought at the moment (see PS3).

Re:Another Approach

[DaveAtFraud]

What makes anyone think that UEFI will be any more secure than anything else Microsoft releases? Actually cracking the key may take longer than the universe has been in existence but I'm betting dear Microsoft won't do any better at engineering this than anything else. There is probably an easily exploitable hole that doesn't require actually cracking the key.

Cheers,
Dave

Re:Another Approach

[ozmanjusri]

UEFI and Secure Boot aren't the same thing.

Approach #4

[Anonymous Coward]

Disable secure boot.

From http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/windows/hardware/jj128256:

"Mandatory. Enable/Disable Secure Boot. On non-ARM systems, it is required to implement the ability to disable Secure Boot via firmware setup. A physically present user must be allowed to disable Secure Boot via firmware setup without possession of PKpriv. A Windows Server may also disable Secure Boot remotely using a strongly authenticated (preferably public-key based) out-of-band management connection, such as to a baseboard management controller or service processor. Programmatic disabling of Secure Boot either during Boot Services or after exiting EFI Boot Services MUST NOT be possible. Disabling Secure Boot must not be possible on ARM systems."

They made disabling secure boot required for the Windows logo on x86 (while probably worried about the threat of an antitrust investigation).

This is why I hate Microsoft

[theRunicBard]

They don't try to make better products, they just try to kill the competition. I see ads for their crap with cool songs, a lizard, and neat apps everywhere but the actual thing doesn't work. Even they can't work it right, as shown by several demos they have done. They seem to recognize it but instead of dealing with it, they just try to eliminate everyone else. Linux has a MUCH better programming environment than anything Microsoft can offer. Even its overall usability (I use Ubuntu) is more intuitive. So Microsoft tries this shit. It's not secure and it's not user-friendly. It's just meant to make Linux harder to install. And I can't support a company that takes this approach. Fuck them. It's a good thing their company is dying. Hopefully more OEMs see this and start offering Linux PC's, but I kind of doubt it.

Re:This is why I hate Microsoft

[sabri]

They don't try to make better products, they just try to kill the competition. I see ads for their crap with cool songs, a lizard, and neat apps everywhere but the actual thing doesn't work. Even they can't work it right, as shown by several demos they have done. They seem to recognize it but instead of dealing with it, they just try to eliminate everyone else. Linux has a MUCH better programming environment than anything Microsoft can offer. Even its overall usability (I use Ubuntu) is more intuitive. So Microsoft tries this shit. It's not secure and it's not user-friendly. It's just meant to make Linux harder to install. And I can't support a company that takes this approach. Fuck them. It's a good thing their company is dying. Hopefully more OEMs see this and start offering Linux PC's, but I kind of doubt it.

Ok, I'm probably going to kill my karma and move from Excellent to Suspected Troll, but so be it...

Until 5-6 years ago, I would totally agree with you. I've been a *ix advocate for years and will be for a while. However, with the introduction of Windows XP, I've switched from using *ix (more specifically Red Hat, and later on FreeBSD) on my desktop to Windows. Why? Because things just work out of the box. I was used to googling for hours and hours to find the right dependencies for a certain application I wanted, which then would be conflicting with something that I'd already installed and after being forced to use Windows by my then-employer, I quickly installed it on my PCs at home, too.

When Asus came with their small netbooks, I bought a Linux version. Unfortunately I found it quite unusable so I installed Windows. Again. In my opinion, *ix is perfect, more than perfect in the role of a server. Apache kills IIS just by looking at it. Sendmail outperforms Exchange while picking its nose. SSH is far better than using RDP to administer your server.

As recent as four months ago, I tried switching to Ubuntu on my corporate Windows Vista laptop. After two days of downtime, I found that I was unable to find a decent calendaring tool that would work with the companies Exchange server. No Lync support. Only partial support for Office tools. I returned my laptop to the IT department to have a new Windows image installed and within 3 hours I was back online.

Microsoft sucks when it comes to their business practices, I fully, more than fully agree with you on that. But their products are no longer that bad as they once were.

Re:Approach no. 4 - Do nothing

[jkrise]

More than XP, I am thinking different flavours of Windows 8. System admins need to wipe off the OEM stuff and install their Enterprise License stuff on new kit. That could be a different flavour of 8 or earlier versions of the OS as well. If they can't do it, they will simply ignore Windows 8 and wait for the next version that removes the restriction of Secure Boot.

Flash the BIOS

[bky1701]

We already have hacked BIOSes for far more irrelevant reasons than this. I expect it to become a common thing to just wipe secure boot from the system entirely if this is a problem.

Re:Flash the BIOS

[Anonymous Coward]

They are almost certainly going to be requiring signed firmware images on any Win8 Logo'd hardware so no you won't be hacking the BIOS so simply.....

Frankly from a security standpoint what they are proposing makes sense. they aren't even receiving any money from the likes of Ubuntu or RedHat if they choose to use this system. Yeah, it might be painful and it's certainly different but it makes security sense if done right. Had some sort of international consortium come up with this and Microsoft joined in would we be so upset? Oh wait that sort of did kinda' happen....

Will be very interesting to see how this plays out for sure!

P.S. Anon to preserve my moderations...

Re:Approach no. 4 - Do nothing

[afidel]

WHAT?!? Secure Boot will do nothing to impede enterprise Windows users. You'll either use Windows8/2012 and have a signed boot loader or use 2008R2/7 and disable secure boot. Btw it would also do nothing to impede enterprise Linux users either, they'd either use a commercial signed distribution or build their own and have the build process install their keys into the TPM chip (trust me, enterprises already deal with crypto from internal PKI to external SSL to drive encryption).

Re:Approach no. 4 - Do nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

System admins need to wipe off the OEM stuff and install their Enterprise License stuff on new kit.

Most corporate desktop admins are far happier if the machine can be deployed with less mucking around. Just unboxing 1200 new machines is a pain in the ass... if they also have to reimage and reconfigure each new machine (actually easier and more streamlined than unboxing these days, but nonetheless, extra time, extra money they'd rather not spend), they'll not be so joyous, and everything slows down.

If they can't do it, they will simply ignore Windows 8 and wait for the next version

Half right... because this, basically, is wise. The other half is they will harden what they have. Microsoft early adopters and fanbois notwithstanding, Microsoft has done nothing to increase the productivity of the office worker since XP/Server 2003/Office 2003. The pitfalls of XP are well known and huge incident databases have been built: nothing can break that doesn't have an immediate fix. Seven and even Vista is still in the early stages of figuring out all the solutions of all that can and does go wrong. I think any large or medium sized corporations still on the 2003 paradigm are fine and well under the budget expendature of those idiots that needlessly and irrationally raced to upgrade as long as they are in a rotation of reimaging every XP machine every 4-6 months... if their network infrastructure is resilient to the trouble users can get into, they may never need to upgrade these to new systems until the physical machines and their components cease to function.

Re:yes and no

[ozmanjusri]

Mobile devices are where a majority of computing dollars are going (in the consumer world).

I think it may be where it's going soon in the corporate world too, especially with BYOD. If so, Ubuntu may be on to something with their Ububtu for Android kit.

It lets you run your phone/tablet as a portable device, then as a full desktop OS once it's docked with a monitor, mouse and other external peripherals. In the video, they're even showing it running Citrix for some legacy applications.

http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_for_Android

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzc0uMXGFBY

Re:Approach no. 4 File complaint to D.O.J.

[Anonymous Coward]

If this is not an example of Microsoft's monopolistic practices i don't know what is.

EU vs monopolistic behaviour?

[Richard_J_N]

Seems to me that this is a very serious violation of the spirit of the antitrust rulings when MS killed netscape. Why aren't our consumer protection agencies stepping in to forbid MS from doing this?

It's freedom, not price that matters.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you purchase something purely based on price you are one stupid user. Freedom matters and just because the majority don't understand the issue doesn't mean it doesn't mean the lack of freedom isn't harming them.

The lack of freedom causes so many problems. It prevents competition, it prevents compatibility, it prevents upgradability, it makes common applications obsensely and abusively exspensive.

Now I'm not saying you shouldn't pay the developers. You should contribute. For most people payment is how one contributes. While selling free software may not work terribly well for developers due to the lack of understanding of what free software is and is not contributory models work fairly well if done right. So do agrements between companies supporting free software like ThinkPenguin and Trisquel. Or Google and distributions/web applications. There are other agrements as well. Such as CDs and merchandise. All of these have value and can and do fund free software development.

Windows 8 is not going enterprise and OEM's

[Joe_Dragon]

Windows 8 is not going enterprise and OEM's need to not lock out XP / Windows 7 as they will lose the enterprise market if they do so.

the MB makers likely will not want to go windows 8 only.

Re:Approach no. 4 - Do nothing

[jd2112]

Most corporate desktop admins are far happier if the machine can be deployed with less mucking around. Just unboxing 1200 new machines is a pain in the ass... if they also have to reimage and reconfigure each new machine (actually easier and more streamlined than unboxing these days, but nonetheless, extra time, extra money they'd rather not spend), they'll not be so joyous, and everything slows down.

If you are deploying 1200 new machines Dell or HP or whoever will most likely gladly pre-install your corporate OS image for you. There will be an additional cost for doing so but it's usually much less than having your own desktop support staff doing it.

Re:yes and no

[DarwinSurvivor]

There are a few things people forget when they compare sales numbers of desktops vs mobile devices.

A) Most houses have 1 or 2 desktops (shared by the family), but most people have their own smartphone or laptop (since they take it with them to work/school/etc).
B) Desktops tend not to be replaced as often, partially due to them being more powerful/dollar in the first place, and partly because they are SO MUCH easier to upgrade.
C) Desktops cost a LOT less (unless you get a screaming gaming rig) than any other computing device out there, so comparing the *amount* people spend on desktops vs mobiles is pointless.
D) A lot of people that build gaming machines (and even some that don't), build there computers 1 piece at a time, and thus don't get counted as "PC Sales", almost NOBODY does this with laptops, cellphones or tablets.

Mobile devices may be on the rise, but I doubt desktops will dissapear any time soon, at least not until they stop being half the price of a less powerfull laptop!

Unrelated Note: Why won't slashdot's comment boxes resize horizontally in Firefox?

Re:Approach no. 4 - Do nothing

[flyingfsck]

Actually, if it is 6 or more machines, Dell doesn't even charge for doing that. You just give Dell a preloaded HDD and they use that to image all the machines on your order.

Re:Approach no. 4 - Do nothing

[slashmydots]

Your future prediction is unrealistic. Where there's a demand, there's a product. One of the major motherboard manufacturers will release a linux-capable board without all this locked down bullshit loaded onto it. You ever hear of these things called cell phones? The makers unlock them so damn fast when their carrier exclusivity contract runs out, it's insane. So with a limited number of boards, then Linux devs will only have a worry about a very narrow amount of drivers to support, which will be a huge improvement over the situation right now. Linux will vastly improve in performance because of it, MS will probably have multiple glitches that lock itself out of booting, viruses will infect the MBR anyway (or whatever this was allegedly supposed to prevent) and Linux will take over the world.
I can't imagine how one word of that would be inaccurate.

Re:Approach no. 4 - Do nothing

[Z34107]

Why does this keep popping up? XP won't even boot under UEFI.

Re:Approach no. 4 - Do nothing

[Billly Gates]

People are not as productive with XP/2003 and I dispute that claim. When you have computers that take 8 minutes to be responsive to start up, or inactive for 3 hours every Tuesday due to McCrappy doing a scan limiting 1 app open at a time, can't find files in a share with 10,000 files, help desk putting out fired with rootkits and viruses all day that eats up into productivity.

Sure your friendly beancounter accountant only looks at cost but it is always assumed workers are just as productive regardless of time and equipment.

A modern Windows 7 environment you have instant search and can find things like Acme corp sales distribtion 2008 within seconds! The calls for malware go down in half. Your systems do not have Windows rot and get all sluggish. To boot your computers go into sleep mode and you can save millions or at least hundreds of thousands in energy costs.

Your workers can use more functions in Office they didn't know where there either. Sorry ribbon haters but studies show otherwise and after 1 month of using it you will not want to go back. I can just use my keyboard now with Win 7/Office 2010 and hardly use the mouse as much with instant search and the using the numbering shortcuts with the ribbons. It rocks on a laptop too.

Your workers will be spending more time working and getting things down. You really need to sell yourself better at work rather than kiss up with the cost accountants.

Re:He's right you know...

[Zontar The Mindless]

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?

Re:Security will not catch on

[Zontar The Mindless]

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

Re:Approach no. 4 - Do nothing

[RobbieThe1st]

Nokia N900 - Commercial, retailed phone, fully open bootloader.

But, your point still stands.

That being said, I fully expect the "unlocked" bios-emulation mode to be around for at least 8 years, if not more - corporate needs XP support. However, the lock would actially be a /good/ thing... if we can install our own keys.
I'm hoping for that sort of support, so corporate IT could sign particular versions of files and/or bootloaders and lock things down. Seems like a step up, there, so long as the accepted key list is editable.

Re:Approach no. 4 File complaint to D.O.J.

[Spiked_Three]

haha. Apple has made that frivolous. What jury (be it a judge or real jury) would find Microsoft has a monopoly these days? Apple keeps reminding us how they are the number one now.

Oh and btw, doesn't Apple also restrict what boots and how? to make sure you ONLY buy Apple hardware? Yep, MS keeps 90% of the market, can and WILL dictate to the OEMs how to build their machines, and there is nothing anyone can do about it, thanks to Apple's efforts.

And top it off, MS is getting more into the hardware market, and controlling the software sales channels, they want to be just like Apple. I can't wait to see how it comes out. My guess is both MS and Apple will end up being losers, and guess what, linux will still be a loser also. Something new will come along, dictated by ATT and the Olympic comittee, and the 99% will still be whining about how the 1% controls everything. Nothing will change.

Re:Approach no. 4 - Do nothing

[hairyfeet]

Damn you had it right and then you had to go and throw in the ribbon LOL!

You are right about win 7 as I've had my business customers on it since 2010 and it took me on average 20 minutes to show them the new features and then they were off to the races. the improvements over XP are so many when I'm forced to work on an XP machine it feels like going back to Win95, its just painful. You have 64bit with great driver support so you can have the machines loaded with memory, superfetch actually puts that memory to use by having their programs preloaded into RAM and ready to go, breadcrumbs and jumplists make getting back to where you were the day before a breeze, its just a better OS.

Now you are wrong about the ribbon, only because you are not taking into account office jocks have been using office for over a decade and know it like the back of their hand. The ribbon blows muscle memory all to shit and I've watched as people that could fly on 2K3 were brought to a screeching halt thanks to the ribbon. Sure its great if you've never used office before, but that isn't their biggest demographic is it? IMHO they should have had a switch at install that let the user choose which layout to have along with a GPO so it could be deployed across the network in whichever config the IT dept wanted.

As for TFA, everyone is worried about this...why exactly? Its win 8, aka "LOL I iz a cell phone LOL" OS, this thing is gonna go over about as well as Michael Richards at an NAACP luncheon. if you don't want Secureboot in X86 its a simple switch away, and nobody is gonna buy WOA unless they find it on Woot! at 80% off. Just look at the numbers or lack thereof for WinPhone 7, If they crack higher than 6% on ARM I'll frankly be shocked. Finally let us not forget the EU doesn't like MSFT anyway so if they try to lock X86 they are gonna get hit with so many fines they won't know what hit them.

Re:Approach no. 4 - Do nothing

[Kalriath]

Most corporate desktop admins are far happier if the machine can be deployed with less mucking around. Just unboxing 1200 new machines is a pain in the ass... if they also have to reimage and reconfigure each new machine (actually easier and more streamlined than unboxing these days, but nonetheless, extra time, extra money they'd rather not spend), they'll not be so joyous, and everything slows down.

This isn't even slightly true. Already every corporate re-images every desktop they get because they all come with Windows 7 and their 12 year old Line of Business apps are all certified for Windows XP only. I know for each of our 15000 or so desktops, every one of them gets attached to the network and the first thing that happens is a tech hits F12 and whacks in the provisioning admin credentials to kick off the otherwise completely zero-touch imaging process. I don't know where you get the idea that it's extra time or that configuration is necessary. Deploying Windows over the network can be done with zero intervention.

Re:Approach no. 4 - Do nothing

[Z34107]

If you're turning off UEFI, why are you worried about secure boot?

Re:Security will not catch on

[AmiMoJo]

That type of rootkit was common years ago and still is. Typically they target one of the low level OS components such as the SATA driver, which is loaded before any security stuff and has full access to the entire memory space.

At first anti-virus software couldn't even detect it because the rooted OS was prevented from seeing the file in directory listings or accessing it directly. Eventually they figured out how to get around that, but still couldn't remove the file. Then they figured out how to remove the file when booted into a different OS (i.e. take the HDD out and put it in another machine) but of course that deleted the SATA driver so a XP refresh install was required. That was where I left it when I stopped working in that business.

Re:Approach no. 4 File complaint to D.O.J.

[jbolden]

First off Apple's share of the desktop market in the USA is 8-12% which is about where it was when Microsoft was considered a monopoly. Microsoft's defense at this point might be the existence of a tablet market where they have no presence. But even if one does include tablets Windows still far outsells iOS and OSX combined. Apple targets profitable customers not marketshare.

As for Apple restricting boot. No they don't. In fact they produce and support a multi-platform bootloader for their computers: http://www.apple.com/support/bootcamp/
They also work with parallels and VMware to help people load virtual images of windows.
Apple doesn't mind in the slightest if you buy their hardware and then run someone else's OS on it.

On their iOS devices, iTunes allows you to put any BIOS image in you want.

Re:Security will not catch on

[jbolden]

They didn't have to crawl or beg, they just asked and Microsoft said yes. Microsoft was anxious to support Ubuntu since they don't want a repeat of the paranoia that surrounded Palladium.

It'd be a lot easier to accept if the task were granted to a company with no stake in the OS market, like Intel.

Most likely there are going to be about 6 signing authorities on the BIOS that ship. Microsoft, someone like Verisign, a few Asian ones, maybe the hardware vendors themselves (i.e. Dell signs for UEFI in Dell's and collects the check). There is no reason to believe Intel, Western Digital (which has played for open standards for decades) or someone unexpected like NVidia won't step forward. I could see IBM who is much more trusted by the Linux community doing it.

Re:Approach no. 4 File complaint to D.O.J.

[jbolden]

First off, learn manners.

Now for lurkers:

start iTunes on your Mac and hold home- and on/off-button on the iphone. connect mac and iphone and keep holding the buttons on the iphone.
the iphone boots in restore-mode, itunes opens up the restore dialog. release the two buttos on the iphone.
hold option-key on the mac and then press "restore" in iTunes. Dialog pops up asking for the firmware to use then point to the new file and you are set.

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And of course Apple lets you install apps on iOS without their approval. They don't let you distribute them widely without their approval. But you can install anything you want using iTunes.