I think this might be overblown, yes it's a concern... but only for secondary sales.
The average joe user is going to go into a store and buy a desktop or laptop, and never install another operating system, let alone upgrade the OS. When that device reaches the end-of-life, it's given to their kid, or donated somewhere, that's when the hard drive is wiped and Linux is installed if the Windows keys aren't glued to the chassis and there's no reinstall disc.
So we're at least 4 years off before this gets noticed as a problem, and by then it would be too late, those machines get landfilled instead of reused.
For the server market, this feature will never be enabled, as the numerous hypervisor implementations will never have the OS talking to the real hardware. It's within reason for Xen, VMWare, etc to include secure boot keys if they must emulate the secureboot environment.
This leaves the enthusiast who builds their own computer, there will be no secureboot for these people, because the keys won't be available.
So the point is not that you can't buy a dell and install linux on it, but rather you can't get recycle any windows 8 computer that has secureboot enabled.
And yes the "bestbuy optimized" types do exactly that, they click through the EULA's for the included software, delete the OEM's bloatware off the desktop, and install the antivirus and printer drivers. No optimization actually takes place. They hire bored highschool students to do that work.
Power management, mobile and firmware developer on Linux. Security developer at Aurora. Ex-biologist. mjg59 on Twitter. Content here should not be interpreted as the opinion of my employer. Also on Mastodon.
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Date: 2011-09-28 02:23 pm (UTC)The average joe user is going to go into a store and buy a desktop or laptop, and never install another operating system, let alone upgrade the OS. When that device reaches the end-of-life, it's given to their kid, or donated somewhere, that's when the hard drive is wiped and Linux is installed if the Windows keys aren't glued to the chassis and there's no reinstall disc.
So we're at least 4 years off before this gets noticed as a problem, and by then it would be too late, those machines get landfilled instead of reused.
For the server market, this feature will never be enabled, as the numerous hypervisor implementations will never have the OS talking to the real hardware. It's within reason for Xen, VMWare, etc to include secure boot keys if they must emulate the secureboot environment.
This leaves the enthusiast who builds their own computer, there will be no secureboot for these people, because the keys won't be available.
So the point is not that you can't buy a dell and install linux on it, but rather you can't get recycle any windows 8 computer that has secureboot enabled.
And yes the "bestbuy optimized" types do exactly that, they click through the EULA's for the included software, delete the OEM's bloatware off the desktop, and install the antivirus and printer drivers. No optimization actually takes place. They hire bored highschool students to do that work.