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FreeBSD Team Begins Work On Booting On UEFI-Enabled Systems
An anonymous reader writes "The FreeBSD project has begun the process of making it possible for the operating system to run alongside Windows 8 on a computer which has secure boot enabled." Linux distros have taken to using a minimal loader, signed by Microsoft, to enable booting on UEFI systems with secure boot. "Indeed we will likely take the Linux shim loader, put our own key in it, and then ask Microsoft to sign it," says developer Marshall McKusick in the linked IT Wire article. "Since Microsoft will have already vetted the shim loader code, we hope that there will be little trouble getting them to sign our version for us."
Too bad the user can't manage his own hardware now. We're at the mercy of the mobo manufacturers, as they decide who's keys are trusted by default (ie microsoft ONLY). If I have to go to microsoft in order to be allowed to boot BSD on my own motherboard, then my property rights are being violated. I'm not leasing or borrowing my mobo, I've bought it. That means nobody else has a right to tell me I can't do whatever I want with it (within legal limits).
The only feature of UEFI so far is to wrest control from the actual owner of the hardware. This is just as bad as DRM. Nobody woke up this morning and said to themselves "I wish I could buy a desktop computer that let me do less with it than my current machine." Nobody goes to iTunes thinking "I wish I could buy a song that plays on fewer devices than what I have" and nobody thinks "I wish I could buy a movie that plays on my cellphone, but I sure would be pissed if it could play on my TV, Kindle and laptop too"
UEFI so far is only a bad thing. I currently own a motherboard that claims to have "dual uefi" whatever that means, and I still can't disable secureboot even with a manual. That's simply not an option. The manufacturers, in collusion with microsoft, have figured out a way of forcing me to use windows 8. I don't want to use windows 8. And my only alternative is counting my current mobo as a loss of $120, and buying either a used mobo (who knows how damaged it is), or a mobo that's been sitting in a warehouse a few years (better than the former, but still iffy. Why are they there in the first place? Why haven't they been sold yet?)
Hectice, baby, Mercator says hello to you
But boot virii/malware are not very common anyway.
And of course the way to respond to a potential threat is to do nothing until it's common, then scramble to find a half-assed solution.