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Microsoft Signature PC Requirements Now Blocks Linux Installation: Reports

Posted by msmash on from the boom dept.

Reader sombragris writes: According to a well-documented forum thread, the Signature PC program by Microsoft now requires to lock down PCs. This user found out that his Lenovo Yoga 900 ISK2 UltraBook has the SSD in a proprietary RAID mode which Linux does not understand and the BIOS is also locked down so it could not be turned off. When he complained that he was unable to install Linux, the answer he got was: "This system has a Signature Edition of Windows 10 Home installed. It is locked per our agreement with Microsoft."
Even worse, as the original poster said, "[t]he Yoga 900 ISK2 at Best Buy is not labeled as a Signature Edition PC, but apparently it is one, and Lenovo's agreement with Microsoft includes making sure Linux can't be installed." As some commenter said: "If you buy a computer with this level of lockdown you should be told."

There is also a report on ZDNet which looks very understanding towards Lenovo, but the fact remains: the SSD is locked down in a proprietary RAID mode that cannot be turned off.

8 of 491 comments (clear)

  1. Lenovo is at fault, not MS (per the article) by GregEschbacher · · Score: 5, Informative

    The article more accurately summarizes things than the biased snippet: "On first blush this seems to be an issue relating to how Lenovo has configured the systems. I can't find any evidence to suggest that Microsoft is trying to "lock" Signature Edition PCs to Windows 10, or making any moves to shut the door on Linux users" This seems to be about Lenovo's use of proprietary drivers for RAID, not MS system requirements. And a reminder that corporate tech support folks have no clue what they're talking about, so quoting a forum post by one does not establish insidious contractual obligations for Lenovo by Microsoft.

  2. Re: Strange by cayenne8 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Not saying it isn't possible. But those are devices that the OS maker did not intend to be able to run Linux or any other OS but their own. The fact that workarounds have been found is beside the point.

    What workarounds are you talking about?

    I'm not familiar with Pixel...but with an Apple, you just boot up from a USB with Ubuntu or whatever distro you want and it installs.

    There are no lockdowns or pitfalls you have to work "around"...the Apple machines are not locked down in the fashion that this article about windows on the lenovo speaks to....

    --
    Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
  3. Lenovo dev team working on it by drnb · · Score: 5, Informative

    A reddit poster offered this, in his link Lenovo says the dev team is working on it:

    ""[–]0xFFFFFF 89 points 7 hours ago*
    Levono is aware of the issue and fixing it: https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/L...
    It is on hackernews, where people are being rational and theorizing that this is not microsofts fault. More like best-buy rep doesn't know what he talks about and the SSD doesn't have support drivers in linux kernal.. Or lenova messed up their bios implementation.
    Luckily we have the reddit witchhunt in full force, so we can make uninformed rants!
    Note: Every single previous similar scenario about linux being locked out has not been microsofts fault, which is why people are sceptical that this is the case this time..
    I also have a Signature Edition laptop, it runs linux fine..""
    https://www.reddit.com/r/linux...

    The Lenovo link has an official post saying:

    "Re: Yoga 900-13ISK2 - BIOS update for setting RAID mode for missing hard drive on linux install Options
    07-27-2016 10:04 AM
    Thank you for confirming it is still not possible to install Linux on Yoga 900-13ISK2 systems.
    This issue has been escalated to the Development team. I am unable to offer a timeframe for fix at this stage in the investigation. With previous cases, BIOS fixes have been delivered anywhere from several weeks to several months.
    I will post again when I have more information on the investigation."
    https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/L...

    1. Re:Lenovo dev team working on it by hey! · · Score: 3, Informative

      Manufacturers have a long history of semi-deliberately screwing up linux support on laptops.

      For example part of ACPI is a table in NVRAM called the Differentiated System Description Table; manufacturers put information in the DSDT that tell the operating system about devices that need switching on and off when going into various power states. One of the features of ACPI is that the DSDT can give different operating systems different instructions -- a feature I can think of no justification for, at least as far as the user's benefit is concerned.

      Some manufacturers (Toshiba) on some models simply detect the Linux case and turn off a bunch of stuff at boot time, like the sound card and the network cards. This is why I had to learn about that DSDT shit in the first place. The hardware is all supported by Linux, and if you boot with ACPI turned off they work flawlessly, but of course you have no power management. The fix is a dynamic replacement of DSDT and Linux boot time, which makes kernel upgrades a chore, but in principle the fix is simple: copy the stuff the manufacturer says to do under "Windows" and paste it into the "Linux" section. Then everything works perfectly, but the rigamarole is way beyond what the average user can tolerate, and it's purely the manufacturer being a prick to customers who want Linux.

      --
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  4. Re:Which RAID level? by cdrudge · · Score: 3, Informative

    Depending on specific implementation, RAID 0 and RAID 1 (and JBOD) can happily run on a single disk. Obviously you don't get any advantages of multiple disks, the data is still striped or mirrored across all n drives in the array...there just happens to be 1 drive.

    Some feature implementations also require RAID setups to function. Intel's Smart Response Technology for instance requires the controller to operate in RAID mode for a SSD drive to be used as a cache for a HDD. The SSD would operate as a RAID-0 array of a single drive. See the note under step 4 in the Enabling Intel Smart Response Technology section.

  5. Re:You Really Want To Go Down This Road MS?? by Palinchron · · Score: 3, Informative

    I was talking about the more general case of locked-down phones, smart TVs, bluray players, and cars. I think that's currently legal in most of the world, but it shouldn't be.

    --
    The lesson here is that a sufficiently large corporation is indistinguishable from government. --ultranova
  6. Re:MS Hates Linux by mspohr · · Score: 4, Informative

    Except Chromebooks are taking over. They run Linux at the core.
    (You can even easily install Linux using Crouton if you need programming, command line, Linux software, etc. It's fast since it uses the same Linux core. It runs ChromeOS and Linux side by side in a chroot environment. You can switch from one to the other with a simple hotkey command.)
    Hard for Microsoft to block Chromebooks.

    --
    I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
  7. Perhaps Intel is to blame? by Tranzistors · · Score: 3, Informative

    Matthew Garrett wore informative article on this one: http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/44...