> And now the last time I tried to load a kernel module I had built for my Ubuntu system, it refused because, duh, it wasn't signed by some UEFI key I had never

> And now the last time I tried to load a kernel module I had built for my Ubuntu system, it refused because, duh, it wasn't signed by some UEFI key I had never even seen. So now of course, the Ubuntu is fucking gone. There is no conspiracy here. The option you are looking for is in your BIOS/UEFI, not in the OS. You should have known better and read the fucking manual. Your machine comes with Secure Boot enabled by default, by the policy of Secure Boot, there are two possible outcomes. 1. If the OS doesn't support Secure Boot, you cannot boot the OS until Secure Boot is disabled (or you add your own signing key to BIOS/UEFI). 2. If the OS supports Secure Boot and signed by a big firm, you can boot it by default, but by the policy, it cannot execute any unsigned driver until Secure Boot is disabled (or you add your own signing key to BIOS/UEFI). By supporting Secure Boot, Ubuntu has made OS installation works out-of-the-box, otherwise you cannot even install the system (if so, I bet you'll complain how Ubuntu is gone for you, and how free and open source has terrible user experience - due to its absurd priority on the notation of freedom, does not even boot, and blablabla). TL;DR: Your rants are unwarranted. You can always disable Secure Boot, try disabling it first. If the UEFI on your PC doesn't allow you to disable Secure Boot, you can write a warranted angry post then, the conspiracy would be real (there used to be some evil embedded/tablet PCs that did this), otherwise it's not - you are free to disable Secure Boot, adding your signing key, optionally, even deleting Microsoft's signing key to fully control Secure Boot under your own discretion in the vast majority of PCs. > Even Windows you can just boot into a development mode and it might scream at you on the desktop, but it will allow you to modify your system as you wish. This is plain falsehood. Again, read the manual from Microsoft: If Secure Boot is enabled, you cannot boot into a development mode - the BCD setting is disabled. Windows does not allow you to modify your system as you wish. You cannot run, develop, or debug an unsigned kernel-mode driver unless you disable Secure Boot [0]. Disclaimer: I run Linux/BSD exclusively, I don't do any development on Windows, don't take my words for it, instead, check my citations to Microsoft's documentation. It's for Windows 8 32-bit that happened to be the first hit in my search, but I believe the policies are the same in Windows 10. Finally, locking down a system is not only used for DRM. Maybe you don't want it on a PC, but it's often desirable in production systems. For example, on my server, I completely disabled kernel modules, hotpatching, /dev/mem, etc., so that no code can even be loaded into the kernel (other people do the opposite, it's a tradeoff between uptime and security). There may still be some exploits that make it possible - PaX/grsecurity has better countermeasures and blocks additional attack vectors - but it's not available to the general public anymore. [0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/w8cookbook/secured-boot-signing-requirements-for-kernel-mode-drivers https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/w8cookbook/se...