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> Not just cell phones; with Secure Boot and BitLocker, computers are more locked down too. You can just disable secure boot, no? I just got a brand new laptop
by arp242 2y ago
> Not just cell phones; with Secure Boot and BitLocker, computers are more locked down too.
You can just disable secure boot, no? I just got a brand new laptop today, and I could just disable it. I know you can get Linux to work with it, but I can't be arsed to mess about with it and the practical security benefits for me are basically zero.
Also, don't underestimate the friction that existed in the 90s or early 00s. Nothing worked on Linux or BSD. My government sent me .doc files. Tons of stuff was Windows-only desktop software.[1] Mucking about with xfree86 -configure and /etc/X11/.... was far from easy or straight-forward. Internet access was far more rare and "just Google it" wasn't really a thing, etc. etc. etc.
If I look at the amount of effort I spent to "just get Linux running" back in 2000 or so when I first tried it vs. today, then I'm fairly sure the overall experience is a lot better today. Sure, you need to deal with some stupid nonsense, but that was always the case.
[1]: For all the hate the "modern web" gets from some people here: it does replace tons of crappy desktop stuff with an abstracted isolated VM which, among other benefits, makes running "alternative" systems like Linux or BSD far more viable.
- Filligree 2y ago> You can just disable secure boot, no? I just got a brand new laptop today, and I could just disable it. I know you can get Linux to work with it, but I can't be arsed to mess about with it and the practical security benefits for me are basically zero. An imagined conversation: “Mom, I want to disable secure boot so I can try a free operating system.” “Oh no you don’t. Security is important.” This won’t happen to anyone who actually knows what they’re talking about, but it’s having a real impact on the pipeline for getting there. The conversation isn’t as imagined as all that.
- arp242 2y agoSystems like Ubuntu, Suse, etc. should "just work" with secure boot. This has been the case for over 10 years (Ubuntu starting with 12.04, in a quick check). I just run a custom hacked-up version of Void Linux because I'm cool like that, but no one new to Linux is doing that – they start out with Ubuntu or such, just as I started out with Mandrake back in the day. Also I actually got my laptop with Ubuntu pre-installed, a concept that barely existed in 2000.
- hedora 2y agoSecure boots works great with Linux. Some distros use the MS signed grub shim, but you can generally just go into the BIOS and whitelist whatever bootloader you installed (and optionally disable the factory-loaded MS keys, which I generally do, since I don’t dual boot).
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]