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Author Topic: UEFI Palladium reborn Nightmare.  (Read 3093 times)

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Offline Duce

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Re: UEFI Palladium reborn Nightmare.
« Reply #29 from previous page: September 28, 2011, 09:36:09 AM »
As Koaftder said, no one is forcing OEM's to put this stuff on boards.

UEFI isn't anything new, and MS has had enough trouble with the DOJ/Euro trade comm. to be this damned stupid, lol.

Most of the people chiming in shouting "BIG BROTHER" have no idea what it does or how it works.  I recommend reading some unbiased information, assuming you can find any in this recent wave of "omg M$ is taking over and locking out Linux" headlines.  The article on osnews.com was pure garbage, as are most of them these days.  Uninformed morons not seeing both sides of the coin - pro and con.
 

Offline Daedalus

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Re: UEFI Palladium reborn Nightmare.
« Reply #30 on: September 28, 2011, 10:05:40 AM »
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...
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Offline koaftder

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Re: UEFI Palladium reborn Nightmare.
« Reply #31 on: September 28, 2011, 10:49:13 AM »
The windows logo certification doesn't require or even encourage OEMs to ship devices that will only boot Microsoft products and disallow end users from configuring their products however they see fit to meet their needs. The worst case scenario being purported by the doom and gloom brigade is the least likely thing to happen. That any OEM might think it would be a good idea to limit sales by gimping their product for no financial gain whatsoever seems absurd to me.
 

Offline Daedalus

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Re: UEFI Palladium reborn Nightmare.
« Reply #32 on: September 28, 2011, 11:23:46 AM »
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.
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Offline koaftder

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Re: UEFI Palladium reborn Nightmare.
« Reply #33 on: September 28, 2011, 11:51:47 AM »
Quote from: Daedalus;661654
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.


An OEM would have to spend extra time to go out of their way to disable the options to enable/disable secure boot considering that they have to include that option for customers that won't be running win 8 anyway. Most OEMs don't write their firmware, they license it, why pay extra to disable a feature they know people will complain about if it's missing? The last thing a company needs is a slew of bad product reviews and pissed off geeks steering potential customers towards competitors products.

You're going to need the ability to configure secure boot and TPM to be able to properly setup a device for corporate IT environments. Laptops, netbooks, tablets, all that mess is used in corporate settings. Limiting configurability would just hurt sales.
 

Offline Daedalus

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Re: UEFI Palladium reborn Nightmare.
« Reply #34 on: September 28, 2011, 12:05:28 PM »
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...
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Offline koaftder

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Re: UEFI Palladium reborn Nightmare.
« Reply #35 on: September 28, 2011, 12:14:06 PM »
The samsung tablet running Win 8 handed out at the last Build conference had it:

 

Offline Daedalus

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Re: UEFI Palladium reborn Nightmare.
« Reply #36 on: September 28, 2011, 12:59:05 PM »
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.
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Offline Duce

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Re: UEFI Palladium reborn Nightmare.
« Reply #37 on: September 28, 2011, 01:41:38 PM »
UEFI/EFI isn't anything new, lol.  It's a decade old, Mac's have had it for ages.  I built an AMD based PC for a buddy not too long ago with an EFI "BIOS".  They are quite nice to use.

The sheer panic and outrage people have without at all looking into the facts that this stuff is not at all new boggles my mind.  The press is doing what they do best with this - blowing things out of proportion.  MS mentions UEFI and Win 8, they assume a Big Brother situation.

Microsoft simply isn't stupid enough to lock OS to hardware - they have had enough anti-trust/monopoly issues.  Linux may be a small market on the consumer side, but mobo manufacturers aren't just going to get into bed with MS outright at the expense of every other OS out there.  Locking out competing OS's would be a blatant offense, whether it was MS or the mobo makers, someone would get the book thrown at them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Microsoft_antitrust_case
 

Offline Daedalus

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Re: UEFI Palladium reborn Nightmare.
« Reply #38 on: September 28, 2011, 02:26:09 PM »
@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.
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Offline Duce

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Re: UEFI Palladium reborn Nightmare.
« Reply #39 on: September 28, 2011, 02:52:31 PM »
Hehe, I know you understand it just fine, Daedalus.  Most of us guys that are in the business know full well this will never fly.  It may make sense on MS's part - crush the other OS's, but on the hardware vendor end it's an absolutely ludicrous though.

Wasn't wagging my finger at you in the least, the amount of press that 10+ year old tech is causing is just staggering.  Everyone pulling the "Big Brother" quotes out of the hat seemingly won't even look into the tech behind this, lol.

I am not apologist for Microsoft, and they have done a lot of terrible anti-competitive things, but the idea they would pull this and the vendors would go along with it is absolutely preposterous.

MS cracks a fart in Europe, the trade commissions get uptight over there and start investigating them - rightly so, based on past MS business practices.  MS aren't stupid enough to push this - if they were they might as well earmark a few hundred million dollars for the anti-trust settlements that will most assuredly follow.
 

Offline runequester

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Re: UEFI Palladium reborn Nightmare.
« Reply #40 on: September 28, 2011, 04:03:30 PM »
Quote from: koaftder;661642
People are blowing this issue completely out of proportion. Microsoft isn't requiring OEMs to ship with secure boot firmware that only allows booting a Microsoft OS nor are they providing an incentive to do so.


How do you know that?
 

Offline B00tDisk

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Re: UEFI Palladium reborn Nightmare.
« Reply #41 on: September 28, 2011, 05:20:04 PM »
Golly, if only there was some way for me to run multiple OSes on this Windows PC of mine :( boo hoo.
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Offline runequester

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Re: UEFI Palladium reborn Nightmare.
« Reply #42 on: September 28, 2011, 06:06:33 PM »
Quote from: B00tDisk;661707
Golly, if only there was some way for me to run multiple OSes on this Windows PC of mine :( boo hoo.


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