Linus shoots from the hip, and calls a spade a spade...
 

Not strictly a Slackware matter, but I wanted to share this in my own group of gearheads and not the naive masses.

It looks like mACROsFOT is getting a little desperate again. Their standard M.O. of "Extend, Embrace, Exterminate" is, um... lol.

Well, it looks like the boiz over at Redhat are at it again, suckin' up to Redmond. But Linus gave them a good admonishing a couple of days ago for it - You go girl!

https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/2/21/228 :hattip:

Enjoy :)

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The linked page doesn't seem to want to load for me, but I suspect it's the same topic as this arstechnica article I've just read:
http://arstechnica.com/information-t...oat-microsoft/

This is already the third thread about this topic, see here:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...nt-4175451548/
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...nt-4175451575/

Well then @TobiSGD, perhaps I could interest you in this one?

https://picasaweb.google.com/1152077...58413061926434

Enjoy :

.

And hence the reason why the whole UEFI crap is...crap and a Microshit attempt at control of *everything*, again. The *only* time anything 'Microshaft' should be trusted, is when it's not within 300 frigging miles of whatever it is one is working on. Kick their sellout asses Linus!

Macroshaft loves trying to bone Linux any chance it gets.

I wish Linus would yank Linux away from Red Hat and forbid them to release, work on, or contribute anything to Linux anymore. I won't bring up why, again, but it involves a certain "developer" who shall be known as "He Who Shall Not Be Named".

Red Hat is evil... and I wouldn't be surprised if they've been in bed getting it on dirty and funky with Gates and Balmer before.

How is this related to UEFI? This is about keys for Secure Boot.

Well, the thing is if Microsoft is the key holder for Secure Boot, then they hold all the keys to the kingdom. They are the gatekeepers, and they say who is who, what is what, and this is that.

Do mother boards give you the option to disable secure boot? If they do, then why does anyone care?

Any motherboard/x86(_64) machine that is Windows 8 Logo certified must have the abilities to disable Secure Boot and to enable the user to add and remove keys at his own will, so Microsoft is far from being the gatekeeper.

Well, here's something to consider. So far, I've only heard about being able to turn Secure Boot on or off. There's no way to set it to on for this OS, and off for another. Windows 8 will work without Secure Boot, but what about Windows 9? Most of the people I've known who have gotten into Linux (including myself) started on a machine where they dual booted it with Windows. I still know many people who don't personally care for Windows, but still have to keep it around because of work, hardware that isn't supported on Linux, or for other reasons. If a future version of Windows refuses to work with secure boot deactivated, that's a pretty big hurdle for a new user who isn't willing to switch entirely away from Windows. And it seems like the technical hurdles for supporting Secure Boot on Linux are much larger for the new user unless we accept Microsoft as the sole key authority, since their key is the only one shipping in firmware.

I can't see how Secure Boot doesn't either result in less Linux adoption, or giving a lot more control over Linux to Microsoft... that's why I care.

"Wer in manchen Situationen nicht den Verstand verliert, der hat wahrscheinlich gar keinen." (Lessing)

Meaning: if you don't lose your mind in certain situations, then probably you don't have a mind.

So +1 for Linus.

Indeed. If a motherboard "BIOS" does not have the ability to disable Secure Boot and add/remove keys then the people to complain to (loudly and long) is the motherboard manufacturers.

While this whole debacle may have been precipitated by Microsoft, they are not the only contributory player here.

i am one of those
"HR Block Tax Cut "
it is wrote in MS visual studio and calls IE by name

the move to ie7 killed it for a bit seeing as ie7 was also windows explorer7 .

and a few "dumb" games that are directX


personally i would love to see MS have to get singed keys from
RedHat
Debian
Slackware
FreeBSD
-- and so on
to get windows 7,8,9,???? to run

Put the shoe on the other foot

Well, it's probably going to move to the same way CA's work for https where you have a hand full of companies issuing out CA's for web sites, but instead its for keys to be able to boot an OS. There will be the proprietary companies (e.g. Microsoft and Apple) and then Open Source companies (e.g. Red Hat and Shuttleworth's company). It'll just be sad if we have to pay for these keys by either buying the OS and a key comes with it, or the owner of the OS has to buy a key and distribute it with the OS if the OS is free, such as with Slackware.

Technology is probably going to progress to the point where we'll have to authenticate with our DNA from touching the power button before we can boot our computers...