UEFI Palladium reborn Nightmare.

[Mr_DBUG]

Well ... Apparently the "Windows 8 Certified" tag will , might, lock other OSs out of those PCs - like Linux .. Now the importance of a independent hardware platform like the AmigaONE might be even more important..

http://www.osnews.com/story/25180/Windows_8_Requires_Secure_Boot_May_Hinder_Other_Software

[XDelusion]

Grand isn't it?

And when BeOS was to be shipped with some of the DELL, HP, Compaq, etc. computers back in the day as an option to boot instead of Windows...

Microsoft came around and said,"read the fine print, you can not ship your computers with any other OS besides Windows, if you do not remove BeOS as a boot option, our business is over!".

Brute force. tis the way of the "free market".

[runequester]

Same old ****
 
I imagine if Microsoft was say, a russian company, people would be having a cow about this.

[nicholas]

Outstanding "journalism" from Mr Holwerda again I see.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/22/protecting-the-pre-os-environment-with-uefi.aspx

I don't use any MS products personally or professionally and most likely never will because they are crap and I do not agree with their business practises either, but the truth is far less sensational than the osnews article suggests.

[Duce]

A very sloppy and misleading article from osnews.com.

[B00tDisk]

My god, that's horrible!  I mean, what's next, MS dictating that their OS can only be run on an approved subset of system boards out of all the commodity hardware available?!


/sarc

Yes, that article is bul-l****.

[Mr_DBUG]

I guess the reality is somewhere inbetween Thoms piece and MS statements.. But Im pretty positive it will end up closer to Thom than MS .. Cause what kind of impact will the Linux users of the world have on big OEM PC makers ?? Or mobo makers for that matter... And where does CoreBOOT go ?

[psxphill]

Cause what kind of impact will the Linux users of the world have on big OEM PC makers ?? Or mobo makers for that matter...

Linux owns the server market right now, there is no way that this will come to anything. If Microsoft tried to do what people are claiming then they'll end up in court and they'd lose.

[nicholas]

Linux owns the server market right now, there is no way that this will come to anything. If Microsoft tried to do what people are claiming then they'll end up in court and they'd lose.

+1

[Mr_DBUG]

Another post from a RedHat guy ..

http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/5850.html

[commodorejohn]

The article might be sensationalized, but if you think Microsoft aren't going to take any edge they can possibly get as long as it doesn't get them in trouble, you haven't been paying attention for the past twenty-six years.

[koaftder]

I don't foresee this being an issue. You don't buy a machine preinstalled with windows because you want to run linux. Linux users will buy a machine from a vendor that supports it or more often build a machine speced out with parts that mesh well with the drivers available in linux land. Worst case for those who really want to run Linux natively on a "windows only" machine would be to have a windows driver that can bootstrap the linux kernel and have it take over the system. As long as you can run code in ring 0 there isn't anything preventing anyone from doing whatever they like with their machine.

[LoadWB]

I just attended the NSA Trusted Computing conference last week.  I won't go into the details of the TPC panel discussion and what-not. Suffice to say that, yes, the manufacturer can, if it wanted to, lock out an OS other than Windows (or whatever comes installed.)

If the manufacturer will not provide you with what's necessary to undo that and install another OS, then you buy from someone else.  Period.

The benefits of the Trusted Platform far outweigh the negatives in the DRM-scare camp.  To me, this is like people who buy Apple products and then bitch because they can't install anything they want.  No shyt, Sherlock.

We will see more of this UEFI/TPC stuff coming down the pipe, and it needs to.  It is virtually impossible to secure a system with software alone.  There must be cohesion between the hardware and software.  After all, trusted software is only as trust-worthy as the hardware on which it runs.

I saw and heard about stuff last week which is just out-right scary, and makes me eager to attend DefCon or a Black Hat.

[runequester]

freedom, convenience, etc etc

[commodorejohn]

If the manufacturer will not provide you with what's necessary to undo that and install another OS, then you buy from someone else.  Period.

Yeah, that works as long as you assume that there's enough demand for alternative-OS booting that manufacturers don't think it's worthwhile to let themselves be bought off. After all, it's not like Microsoft has been known to strong-arm PC vendors out of providing alternative OSes before, or anything...

The benefits of the Trusted Platform far outweigh the negatives in the DRM-scare camp.  

We will see more of this UEFI/TPC stuff coming down the pipe, and it needs to.  It is virtually impossible to secure a system with software alone.  There must be cohesion between the hardware and software.  After all, trusted software is only as trust-worthy as the hardware on which it runs.

Could you please explain to me what real benefits this would offer? Because if it just down to preventing booting of unauthorized operating systems for security purposes...you can do that with existing computers. Every half-decent BIOS in every motherboard manufactured in the past five years has had the ability to disable booting from external media, and to secure the BIOS itself via password. It's not going to be any more help against theft, either; if your security model is such that theft is a realistic possibility, it's not the computer that's the problem.