13 ms·
Linux Is Coming to Windows 8 PCs... Slowly
- techsupporter 14y agoAren't the only systems that are "required" to have UEFI Secure Boot--and to prevent end user disabling of this setting--based on ARM? I was under the impression that nothing had changed for the x86 architecture.
- Zr40 14y agoMy motherboard (a Gigabyte Z77X-D3H) has had Secure Boot added through a firmware update. It allows me to disable Secure Boot, and lets me import custom keys.
- wheaties 14y agoHow do you upgrade firmware? My computer has one of those checks that looks for "windows" in the boot string. I just want to rip it out.
- Zr40 14y agoMy motherboard offers a firmware update tool during boot. It can read firmware images from a FAT32-formatted USB drive.
- silon3 14y agoDoes it allow MS/other keys to be deleted?
- mtgx 14y ago"Despite the best efforts of Fedora, openSUSE, Ubuntu, and the Linux Foundation, booting Linux on UEFI Secure Boot Windows 8 PCs continues to be a problem . The easiest way to avoid Windows 8 lock-in is to disable UEFI Secure Boot from your system before it starts to boot. However, this option may not be available on all motherboard; isn't available at all on Windows RT devices, such as the Surface; " There are also more hoops the Linux vendors have to jump that are explained in the article: http://www.zdnet.com/linux-foundation-uefi-secure-boot-key-for-windows-8-pcs-delays-explained-7000007841/ http://www.zdnet.com/linux-foundation-uefi-secure-boot-key-f... Also, what I didn't understand myself - is the $99 Fedora has to pay for the key just something they have to pay once? Or do they have to pay $99 for every single machine? Because that would be pretty ridiculous if Microsoft managed to make Linux as expensive as Windows licenses, through UEFI.
- jlgreco 14y agoThe $99 is a one time fee.. but frankly even that is absurd. Why should fedora pay microsoft so that I can use my presumably IBM compatible dell PC? It is madness.
- seanmcdirmid 14y agoI'm sorry, but what does IBM compatibility even mean anymore?
- jlgreco 14y agoThink of it as a philosophy towards consumer computing hardware.
- seanmcdirmid 14y agoIt just sounds so anachronistic. IBM hasn't been really involved in PCs for over 15 years.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- raverbashing 14y agoThey could also sue all manufacturers for anti-competitiveness for not allowing Linux to be run But I think the $99 is cheaper and better (given what some idiot bios developers do - remember (IIRC) one link here on HN where the bios would look for 'Microsoft Windows' or 'Red Hat Linux' on boot entries?)
- hahainternet 14y agoThis is not only occasional but common. ACPI tables are notoriously broken in many bioses and Linux in fact has to do a bunch of horrible workarounds in order to get working tables regularly.
- 14y ago
- JoshTriplett 14y agox86 vendors that want to qualify for the "Designed for Windows 8" logo program have to include UEFI secure boot and enable it by default, though they can allow users to disable it or install their own keys. That creates an extra hoop to jump through to install anything other than Windows 8. ARM systems designed for Windows 8 have the same requirement, and additionally must not allow users to disable it or install their own keys.
- freehunter 14y ago>though they can allow users to disable it or install their own keys Prior to the launch, Microsoft said it was actually required that vendors allow Secure Boot to be disabled on x86.
- JoshTriplett 14y agoOther way around: the original spec did not require vendors to support disabling UEFI secure boot or using "custom mode" (meaning installing your own key). See http://mjg59.livejournal.com/139232.html http://mjg59.livejournal.com/139232.html for one reference to that: "Windows 8 certification does not require that the user be able to disable UEFI secure boot, and we've already been informed by hardware vendors that some hardware will not have this option." Microsoft changed the spec in the wake of the controversy around UEFI secure boot. The current version of the spec (available from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/hh748200 http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/hh7...) does mandate the ability to use custom mode or disable UEFI secure boot, for non-ARM systems only.
- Paradigma11 14y agox86 vendors must allow users to disable UEFI secure boot to qualify for the certificate.
- glesica 14y agoIt seems like what MS may be getting (or trying to get), at least in part, from this is a return to (or continuation of, I suppose) GNU/Linux as strictly an "enthusiast" OS. A BIOS tweak won't stop me, but it would definitely stop my mom. I'm currently in school and I see a surprising number of students using Ubuntu, even outside the CS department. Not a lot, by any means, but more than I would have guessed. I wonder how many of them would be using it if it required a weird workaround or really anything more than "put the disc in and reboot".
- w1ntermute 14y ago> I wonder how many of them would be using it if it required a weird workaround or really anything more than "put the disc in and reboot". Well, "put the disc in and reboot" doesn't work right now on most PCs, does it? You have to go into the BIOS and change the boot order, or pull up the boot menu to make a custom selection.
- manaskarekar 14y agoEven easier: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/help/install-ubuntu-with-windows http://www.ubuntu.com/download/help/install-ubuntu-with-wind...
- glesica 14y agoIt worked on the Thinkpad I bought a few weeks ago... I think most machines are configured to boot from the optical drive first. Even if there is a boot menu, that is still much less scary than having to hunt through a series of menus to find and change an obscure setting. As we in this community are probably all aware, even small obstacles like having to enter a name or type a credit card number can drastically reduce conversion rates on the web. I think this is a reasonable analogue. Even objectively small obstacles can be important.
- taejo 14y agoYou said > Even if there is a boot menu, that is still much less scary than having to hunt through a series of menus to find and change an obscure setting. My mom heard > Even if there is a scary series of menus to find and change an obscure setting, that is still much less scary than having to hunt through a series of menus to find and change an obscure setting.
- liljimmytables 14y agoI wonder if this will have an implication for running Linux on Surfaces, I hope it does because they're a very neat (and affordable - inb4 Asus Transformer) piece of hardware but I have little use for another Windows machine.
- jamesjporter 14y agoI agree. After playing with one of the $500 Surfaces, I thought, "Man I would buy this in a heartbeat if I could wipe it and install Ubuntu".
- mjg59 14y agoThe Surface doesn't carry the third-party signing key, so in the absence of a flaw in the firmware implementation you're not going to be able to run anything other than Windows.
- liljimmytables 14y agoThat's great info, thanks. Disappointing but gratefully received.
- brudgers 14y ago"Installing Linux on most Windows 8 computers is still no easy task." Windows 8 Professional includes the Hyper-V hypervisor. Many PC's recent enough to have UEFI will have a compatible processor (i3 and later). For many tasks a virtualized installation probably has adequate performance - contemporary hardware and Hyper-V are pretty powerful relative to the machines of a few tears ago. Of course, for some, not booting directly to Linux might create a performance concern. For others it is an ideological issue. However, one which is created by the decisions of hardware vendors and market realities, not Microsoft.
- k_bx 14y agoWhile "virtualization of everything" seemed like a real future few years ago, at my experience of having Ubuntu installed as virtual machine for coworkers that use windows (but have to do python on linux) -- it completely suck. We ended out either having separate machines or just finding alternatives to windows-apps for those people.
- LeafStorm 14y agoI tried this at my office in August. When hosting the VM on my (somewhat old) laptop, raw performance was the issue -- there wasn't enough RAM and CPU to run both Win7 and the VM concurrently, and as an intern I couldn't justify the laptop upgrade. When moving the VM to a server, the raw performance issues went away, but network lag became a pretty serious obstacle when using the GUI. In the end, I ended up just SSHing into the VM, and mounting part of its filesystem using Samba. (And assuming that I had been able to get a working graphical environment, it's still a very low standard of "working." There are dozens of little annoyances when you're nesting a completely separate window manager inside your current window manager.)
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- 14y ago
- kylec 14y agoThis whole UEFI secure boot thing is a deliberate attempt to lock out competing third party OSs. I'm surprised there haven't been antitrust inquiries in the US or EU about it.
- daeken 14y agoUEFI Secure Boot. Not UEFI. Two very different things; it's a shame they're conflated so frequently. One is a sane way to bootstrap a system, the other is a lockdown mechanism.
- kylec 14y agoNoted and corrected, thanks.
- brudgers 14y agoThis is a mischaracterization. UEFI secure boot is not required to run Windows 8. It is required to slap a Windows 8 logo on a new machine. That is a decision made by hardware vendors, not Microsoft. Since it is hard to imagine a serious advertising campaign based around a competitor's lack of such logos, such decisions reflect the desktop Linux market. I suspect that hardware vendors are happy to make desktop Linux harder to install because I vividly imagine indignant support calls from novice Linux installers adopting FOSS as an ideology.
- Zr40 14y agoTo be precise, having an optional secure boot is required for the Windows logo certification. If it cannot be disabled, no logo certification. See "Windows Hardware Certification Requirements for Client and Server Systems" [1], requirement "System.Fundamentals.Firmware.UEFISecureBoot", items 17 and 18. [1] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/jj128256.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/jj1...
- beatgammit 14y agoFrom your link: > On non-ARM systems, it is required to implement the ability to disable Secure Boot via firmware setup. To be more precise, this is only true for non-ARM systems. This is evil, since it's entirely possible to have an ARM desktop/laptop, and I really hope there's some kind of anti-trust legislation here. At least Apple offers a way to boot into an alternative OS, even though it is still a bit locked down.
- sudonim 14y agoReminds me of when apple switched to intel hardware and it was believed that you couldn't boot windows. Throw some money after it and people will find a way.
- ConstantineXVI 14y agoBooting Windows on x86 Macs (pre-Boot Camp) was mainly a problem of hardware support; Windows simply didn't support booting via UEFI in 2006, and Macs didn't ship with BIOS emulation. Linux can boot on UEFI systems; the problem here is Secure Boot as configured on Win8 systems simply won't let you boot anything else without the proper signatures (or disabling it).
- looser 14y agoOne more pubkey/privkey layer I assume. Some people think that several locked doors are more secure. I shall say that several locked doors would be more secure if the time is limited for the intruder. We, from the hacking world, have a good amount of time to unlock this one more layer. Well well well, one more layer that does nothing but prevents computers from computing.
- edandersen 14y agoUEFI Secure Boot on ARM machines (Windows RT) cannot be disabled but this is to protect revenue, not the machine. This allows subsidized hardware, hoping that Windows Store app sales will make up for the loss. This is the same business model as the Xbox. Secure Boot on x86/x64 machines is required to have an option to disable, or the machine will not get Windows 8 certified.