Redhat/Fedora selling out to Microsoft

[zxr250cc]

Things just keep cooking along with this topic:

http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/07/0 ... t-solution

cheers,

gcd

[mmix]

ubuntu just sucks, more than microshaft.

[isadora]

Come on guys, a bit more constructive please.

[mk]

I understand your concern Isadora, but if even Linux 'father' gives his finger in the open to the biggest GPU manufacturer, it's not so easy to keep the civil level high I guess :)
Speaking of which, my hat off to the Nvidia guy for not letting his emotions out. If it was for me, I would just return the favor..

But to the topic.
Right now, x86 will be able to disable the SB and will be for a LONG time because of those older MS OSes. In the meantime, I think it will either be cracked or keys exposed or it will just turn out to be useless and cumbersome in general or Linux will even come with a more definitive, independant solution. In any case, I don't think that SB will become well adopted. Even Windows users need to use unsigned drivers rather often. No, too much crap in it.

Important will be the launch of W8 itself. Not because of SB boards, but because of the fact that it horribly sucks. The whole metro nonsense is a work of 'genius'. It's so painful to use, that I can imagine people turning their backs on it quite soon. But we will see.

[zxr250cc]

This secure boot initiative started about ten years ago by Intel. It was EFI and now UEFI as a label. The following link will give full details for those who take the time to use it. Who is the number one chip maker? Intel. Who started UEFI? Intel, not Microsoft.

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ ... ology.html

Of course it isn't as exciting to read this as the sometimes flames in here.

It is informative though...

Oh, did you see the RANT by Theo de Radt about UEFI? He sounded clueless, frankly.

YMMV

cheers,

gcd

[mmix]

http://www.muktware.com/4001/uefi-secur ... -fedora-18

In a FESCo meeting held on 23rd July, Fedora's Engineering And Steering Committee members have decided to include UEFI Secure Boot in Fedora 18. Codenamed Spherical Cow, this release is scheduled to be out this November. Only two votes out of nine were against inclusion of secure boot.

what a shame..

[doktor5000]

What is you actual problem there?

FWIW, as an update to the original topic, a popular german discounter, Aldi, sold the first computer which was shipped with UEFI and Secure Boot. As a sidenote, mostly the sales of those systems are quite good, and this is mainly what get's used by the masses. And guess what, contrary to all those speculations, doubts and rumors - it even had Secure Boot disabled by default, so no issue at all.

[zxr250cc]

Moderation: post deleted as spam

[mmix]

if mageia adopt restrict boot(known as secure boot), i will say goodbye, heh. ;)

[wobo]

Well, IMHO there is too much panic around and such moves as by Fedora do not make things better.

The company "Medion" is a well known assembler of desktop computers. Their prime target group is the low-cost mass market, dominated by Windows. This means the company is a certified OEM of hardware for Microsoft products. This again means that if they roll out a desktop machine with UEFI and secure-boot switched off by default it is perfectly ok in the eyes of Microsoft. Medion is big enough to be sued by Microsoft but not big enough to stand up against Microsoft.

BTW: As most other vendors Medion offers options with all new machines for an upgrade to Windows 8 (for a small fee). Means, that these machines with deactivated secure-boot will also be ok for Windows 8.

So, there is no reason at all for Mageia to even recognize this issue.

[mmix]

http://kephra.de/blog/Stop_UEFI.html#en

We will likely see a new kind of personal computers soon. A kind of computers that John Walker predicted in 2003, and that Cory Doctorow wants us to fight.

I'm talking about the new class of personal computers shipping with the requirement of UEFI Secure Boot. While Microsoft only requires the hardware vendor to lock the boot loader and to prevent installing any unsigned operating system on ARM right now, it will likely require the same for the next Windows sooner or later. This is why we need to stop UEFI at its beginning, even if its currently possible to turn off secure boot to install a free operating system.

It also won't help much if major distributions like Ubuntu or RedHat get a signed key into the boot loader, because UEFI will prevent any normal Linux system programmer from installing his own self compiled operating system. This will become the end of Linux and free software. Or to tell it in John Walkers words: UEFI will put the genie back into the bottle.

We don't have many ways to fight then, but our main weapon as consumer is to teach them an expensive lesson!

This is most easy from Germany, where we have a law that allows us to send back any mail order, internet order or things that had been sold at the door or on phone within 14 days, and charge our money back. So my suggesting is doing this at the moment the first computers ship that are locked to boot only Microsoft systems. Order them, unpack them, ruin the paper and cardboards, and send them back with a note: Can not install Linux.

The same can be done by people who have an American Express credit card, within 30 days worldwide, I think.

[doktor5000]

http://kephra.de/blog/Stop_UEFI.html#en

[...]

This is most easy from Germany, where we have a law that allows us to send back any mail order, internet order or things that had been sold at the door or on phone within 14 days, and charge our money back. So my suggesting is doing this at the moment the first computers ship that are locked to boot only Microsoft systems. Order them, unpack them, ruin the paper and cardboards, and send them back with a note: Can not install Linux.

The same can be done by people who have an American Express credit card, within 30 days worldwide, I think.

If you quote that part about Germany, maybe you should get your facts straight:

1. The first computer, which was sold by the discounter Medion, which is quite popular around here and targeted at the masses of normal users, and had UEFI and supported Secure Boot, came with Secure Boot disabled.
2. For x86-compatible computers, the requirement is that the user needs to be able to disable Secure Boot.

So in general, my summary about this is: FUD, as for other large amounts of this and similar threads.

[zxr250cc]

I second the FUD motion!

I have had the same idea as this has developed but was too polite to say it. It seems most of the mixed posts are like that..

Many of the more thoughtful responses in /. have made the same idea come to mind when they try to reply to over excited posts from some of the more rabid detractors of the UEFI standard. I don't plan on buying Windows 8 but I might buy Windows 7 so I can have long term support for a Microsoft program when XP is dropped from support in a little over a year now. As for my home use I will continue to use Linux with KDE since I honestly prefer not to worry about all the malware that comes along with having Microsoft on my computer.

Cheers,

gcd

[alf]

but I might buy Windows 7 so I can have long term support

but only if you pay for support, the reguĺar support for windows 7 ends at April 08, 2013 as far as i know(and that's 1 year less than for XP)

[mmix]

i hope that it just FUD, but microsoft so hungry now, nobody knows what he is planning

[alf]

the reguĺar support for windows 7 ends at April 08, 2013 as far as i know(and that's 1 year less than for XP)

I've to corect myself, this is the date for servicepack-support, regular support ends at 13.01.2015.

[mk]

Depends on what is regular support in your book.
What you talk about is the support phase where along with security fixes, also various system additions are made, like let's say the whole security center that came with XP SP2, althoug it's unlikely anyting this major will appear in Win7 ever.
Then there is extended support which includes security fixes only and that ends in 2020 for ALL versions of Win7 with exception of Home Premium N.

It's good to note, that this wasn't true at all upon Win7 launch. Only "proffesional" products (according to MS) were eligible for those ~10 years of support, so e.g. Home, Starter, but also Ultimate versions were initially given only those 5 years, exactly as Vista editions before.

Hm, but in such a case, many Vista Ultimate and Home Premium users would already have an obsolete OS, as the initial support for those was till 10.4.2012, not good for (MS's) business.
And also user audience got pissed and complained so MS changed it's mind. So basically all editions of Vista and Win7 now have the extended support phase available (I was one of those in Vista days who complined directly to MS about Vista Ultimate having only basic ~5 year support, in a serious manner..)