Your feelings on UEFI secure boot

[mag36]

Want to hear everyones thoughs on this new UEFI secure boot thing that windows 8 has been implimenting with most PC manufactures.

[anex]

Terrible idea. I mean look at how well the digital signatures worked with the x64. Pay Microsoft money or your program can't run off the x64 architecture. Which is fucking stupid. Gaben really wasn't kidding when he said that he foresaw OEMs leaving the PC market. Windows 8 and its secure boot bullshit can suck my dick. Unless a fix is invented to circumvent (which I have a feeling will be sometime soon) secure boot, it's not worth anyones time.

That is if I am reading the internet correctly.

[jwtemp]

Agreed. Proprietary boot measures do one thing - corner the market. They force you to adhere to a manufacturer's standard rather than an industry standard and this is almost always bad news for consumers.

The good news is Windows 8 is terrible, so it's mostly irrelevant at the moment. If Windows 9 can recover ala Vista --> 7 though, I pray they at least give us an option to bypass/disable UEFI boot out of the box. From what I'm reading though, Windows 'Blue' is going to be following the same atrocious design philosophy as Windows 8, which is 'every screen needs to be a touch screen!'

[ZERO]

I hope it dies but right now it is more like the customers going:
6843

[Steamer]

Old news. It is pure bs though. Lawsuits.

[-=Toy=-=Québec=-FR]

I think you can disable it in the BIOS settings right?

[acolyte_to_jippity]

So, this basically prevents you from booting if you are using a non-authenticated/non-digitally signed copy of your OS?

I mean, i have absolutely no issue with that. At all. Does it interfere with anything else?

[anex]

I don't think it was really designed to thwart the person who accidentally bought a Windows 7 Upgrade key but did a clean install so Windows wouldn't accept the key and the dude had to go get a crack.

This is for more like hardware. Think of it as x64 digital signatures except on hardware not software and Microsoft controls who has the correct signature and who doesn't. Even if you disable it though the BIOS, there really isn't a guarantee that all hardware would work correctly under a different OS.


Why it’s controversial

Many computer hobbyists, especially those who are fans of Linux, are not happy with the way Microsoft is implementing Secure Boot in Windows 8. There are numerous blog posts proclaiming the danger that Secure Boot poses to free/open source software. There is a Facebook group called “Stop the Windows 8 secure boot implementation.”

Their complaints are that 1) Microsoft will require hardware vendors to enable Secure Boot on machines in order to obtain the Windows 8 compatibility logo and 2) Microsoft is leaving it up to the hardware vendors as to whether the user will be able to disable the feature, and whether/what other operating system certificates will be installed in the firmware.

The problem (for those who want to install a different OS) comes when a vendor doesn’t provide a way to disable Secure Boot in the Setup menu and doesn’t install certificates for any OS other than Windows. In that case, those who buy the computers won’t be able to install Linux, either in a dual boot configuration or by formatting and replacing Windows with it. This possible narrowing of choices has the Free Software Foundation soliciting signatures for a petition to urge computer makers to provide a way for users to disable Secure Boot and/or install an alternative OS with Secure Boot enabled.

http://www.windowsecurity.com/articles-tutorials/misc_network_security/Secure-Boot-Controversy-What-does-mean-IT.html

[acolyte_to_jippity]

I don't think it was really designed to thwart the person who accidentally bought a Windows 7 Upgrade key but did a clean install so Windows wouldn't accept the key and the dude had to go get a crack.

This is for more like hardware. Think of it as x64 digital signatures except on hardware not software and Microsoft controls who has the correct signature and who doesn't. Even if you disable it though the BIOS, there really isn't a guarantee that all hardware would work correctly under a different OS.



http://www.windowsecurity.com/articles-tutorials/misc_network_security/Secure-Boot-Controversy-What-does-mean-IT.html

huh. so it's only a bad thing when the manufacturers are retarded?

[anex]

Digital signatures are just a cash grab...

[mag36]

biggest issue from what i read it since it has to be authenticated you cant install free OS like Linux on it

[ZERO]

The point is so that you can only install what operating systems "they" tell you that you can.