Windows 10 and 11: will Secured Boot make any end of Linux?
 

Hello,

It will be more and more difficult to install LINUX on Windows 10 operated systems. Secured boot will be mandatory.

In future windows 11, that might be even more difficult to bypass and install Linux.


http://askubuntu.com/questions/59474...ions-preloader

Will

Maybe to those who buy systems with windows 10,11, etc...

I always assembled my own desktops from parts from tigerdirect.com. When you build your own desktop, you are the OEM of some sort and you can choose the BIOS type you want. My last motherboard that I purchased had EFI as one of the options, but I chosen legacy mbr and my linux installed fine.

If OEMs are going to make linux or other OSes difficult to install on pre-installed windows 10 and beyond systems, then you'd better buy a linux system or learn how to assemble your own desktops.

But good luck trying to buy a laptop in the UK. There is the odd one that crops up in Amazon or Ebuyer with either no OS or FreeDOS or Ubuntu but they are really few and far between. Desktops are really no problem. You can build them or have them built to your specs or buy them with no OS pre-installed.
jdk

Actually, I was focusing on assembling desktops as a means to bypass the OEMs who will attempt to block linux and other OSes to be installed. Laptops don't have that luxury. As you said, buy a linux or a no OS laptop if possible.

Unless they change the uefi specifications, currently uefi specifications mandate that secure boot be able to be turned off. So..maybe windows 11, but Windows 10, seriously doubt it. And if there's enough pushback, OEM's are free to continue using the older UEFI specifications that allow secure boot to be deactivated.

Actually, the (flawed) idea behind UEFI was not "to limit a computer from booting anything other than Microsoft Windows," but rather, "to prevent it from booting an unauthorized DVD of 'something that the owner of the computer did not intend.'"

The same technology could be applied to Linux or to any other OS.

But, frankly, I think it would have been a better and simpler idea to start installing locks and keys on the "reboot" circuit.

My Lenovo doesn't give me the option of legacy BIOS. I do have the option to disable secure boot though.

Surely if they can secure it, the community can hack it to be open again(?!). ;)

No manufacturer would get my money if I couldn't put my O/S of choice on their products! :)

Uefi is just the beginning, there is a shift among device makers to turn their products into dumb disposable appliances that can't be updated or modified in any shape or form. It simplifies a lot of things for them, cuts down the support hassles etc. No one cares about linux we are such a tiny percentage.

You (and I) are part of the minority that quite simply don't matter. You get what is designed for mass consumption and if you can adapt it to your own needs that's a bonus - if you can't then it's tough.

The x86 PC itself was designed around the specific needs of IBM at the time and the DOS operating system. No one envisaged that the BIOS and DOS MBR would be twisted and contorted to run anything else and would still be in use decades later. Probably no one though that hobbyists would sit down and write their own kernels in their spare time or that someone would port BSD code to the 386. So it was probably just taken for granted that x86 was "DOS only".

Initially it was IBM who supplied their systems with their operating systems pre-installed - as with Apple - and it was actually Microsoft which provided a "software only" alternative, opening up the PC platform in the process. Microsoft kept this up for years and has only recently started down the same route as Apple and Android.

I guess my experiences were very different. My first home computer for work was a DEC Rainbow. I got it sometime in the mid-80's. It came with two floppies, each with an operating system: CP/M (8bit) and MS-DOS (16bit). So from the very beginning of my home computer experience I was used to the OS being a separate category from the hardware.
jdk

Does anyone see any game-changing to the point of indispensable hardware on the horizon? Fofr quite some time, up until early 2000s I repurposed an old 486 machine as a router and hardware firewall. A Classic Pentium still does Word Processing just fine. I generally wait and buy what was Flagship quality hardware 3-6 years after it's introduction with the exception of video cards of which I buy current mid-level cards ($200-$300) because for a long time video cards were (and still are) advancing more rapidly than the base system of motherboard, cpu, ram, and hard drive.

Maybe my imagination has dulled with age, but I honestly can't imagine any breakthrough in the next 5 years or more that will compel me to buy a new PC. Since it has Legacy Mode, Secure Boot nor any other severely limiting "improvement" will not affect me or anyone else who doesn't automatically equate "new" with "improved" as a given.

this.

Do you have a link to that? The only specification I know of that regulates if Secure Boot has to have an option to be disabled is the Windows Logo program, and while this specification indeed made it mandatory (on X86 systems) that Secure Boot can be disabled in the Windows 8 version, this is not true for the Windows 10 version, which leaves it up to the hardware manufacturer/OEM if such an option is present.

I'll see if I can find it. I had followed a link from an article I was reading that linked to it that was specifically written for chicken littles to debunk the myth that Windows 10 would lock other OS's out of a machine.