[Lancaster] windows 8 and uefi

[andy baxter]

HI,

Just letting people know, in case you haven't seen it already, about a 
move by Microsoft to require that all PCs certified to run Windows 8 
will be designed in a way that they cannot run any other OS unless the 
developers have bought an encryption key signed by Microsoft.

This is obviously a pretty severe threat to the future of linux, and of 
people's right to decide for themselves what they want to run on their 
computers. Even if linux developers compromise by buying a key from 
Microsoft, as Red Hat have done for example, this still leaves MS as the 
gatekeeper of general purpose computing devices, in a way which is 
hardly healthy for the future of the computer world. (I would have thought).

If any of you are thinking of buying a new computer to run Linux, now 
might be a good time to do so, as the release date for Windows 8 is 
likely to be later this year. It would be a good idea to check 
specifically that the machine /isn't/ certified for windows 8.

There's a good background on the subject here:
http://fsfe.org/campaigns/generalpurposecomputing/secure-boot-analysis.en.html

The wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface

Linus Torvald's reaction (which seems pretty lame to me):
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/linus-torvalds-on-windows-8-uefi-and-fedora/11187

An article on Linux for you:
http://www.linuxforu.com/2012/02/uefi-should-linux-users-be-worried/

cheers,

andy