UEFI Palladium reborn Nightmare.

[Daedalus]

Yep, no OEM is being forced to do this, and Windows 8 will run quite happily on non-UEFI hardware... But the major manufacturers will want the Windows 8 logo on their machines - they have wanted Microsoft approval since Windows 95 days - and will probably quite happily make these changes voluntarily. If the Redhat guys are correct and it isn't made a user-changeable option, it will effectively mean Linux or anything else can't be run on that machine.

I can't see motherboard manufacturers going down this route though, or at least not having an alternative BIOS option to download. But as it is currently, it's nice to stick a lightweight Linux distro on an old Dell machine to get a few more years of life out of it, and it would be a shame if all those computers just went to landfill instead...

[Daedalus]

I understand that, but it does require that it supports secure booting. And given that the OEMs only ship with Windows installed, this option will be enabled by default. I can certainly see how some OEMs might not be too worried about not including a feature to disable secure booting - which sales exactly are they going to limit? They're selling Windows machines to Windows users, chances are none of their customers will even notice the difference.

[Daedalus]

Well, since the secure boot support isn't currently present on traditional BIOS implementations, it's up to the OEMs when they write these new UEFI BIOSes to *include* the option to turn it off. They're not actively choosing to remove a feature - that feature isn't even there yet. As a lesser example, take a Dell machine (which my current Linux box is). I can't adjust any of the memory timings in the BIOS - they're all locked down. I can on my other PC which is self assembled around an Asus motherboard. There are a minority of customers who complain about that, but Dell aren't exactly listening or hurting for it. Geeks aren't Dell's target market, and a geeky review which complains about the inability to get rid of Windows and use something else isn't going to put the average Joe off buying the machine, since they only want it for Windows anyway.

Which OEM customers wouldn't want Windows 8? they're not the target market for most of these companies...

[Daedalus]

Yep, anything running Windows 8 now is sure to. I guess we'll just have to see what happens when Windows 8 is standard on 99% of OEM PCs being shipped.

[Daedalus]

@Duce
I agree, and I'm quite aware of the facts. Mobo manufacturers would never lock out things like that, just like they don't lock out things like chipset timings, and it will always be possible to build a Linux box. It's the OEM-designed boards which might be an issue here in the future - they don't sell motherboards, they sell "black boxes" which run Windows and the insides of which the user isn't supposed to get involved with. Microsoft themselves have very little to do with it, and as you say, they'd be shot down in a second if they did something like that.