On 21/09/11 23:29, Bea Groves wrote:
Just read the following. Comments?
yeah, it is potentially very nasty.
To be Windows 8 certified computers will have to be able to do this
secure boot thing. Most will include an option to turn it off, exactly
like the google chromebooks do, they have a switch to turn off the code
signing requirement so you can run unsigned operating systems. The OLPC
also has this exact same feature, but you can get a dev key and turn it off.
The problem is that some manufacturers might start not bothering to
include an off switch. So that would creep in as a set of machines
(probably quite mainstream high volume ones) that won't run anything but
the pre-installed Windows 8 or above.
The big problem is that Windows 9 might *require* secure boot to run.
This means it won't run on older machines (driving hardware sales, the
industry likes that) and means that more manufacturers will fail to
include an off switch for the secure boot. If the market doesn't punish
them by people avoiding these pre-bricked computers then they will keep
doing it. Microsoft will carefully not require OEMs to fail to include
an off switch, because that would be anti-competitive. Virtualbox and
VMware and so on can include the public keys and provide a secure boot
environment, or run unsigned code for developing drivers and running
Linux, but you won't be running Linux on the hardware, only virtualised.
It is kind of like the current trend for using up 4 primary partitions
and not creating extended partitions to make dual booting harder, but
this one you potentially can't get round. I can see a time when you have
to get a laptop chipped to run Linux like you would a DVD player to do
multi region.
Alan.
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