2 ms·

If you buy from an OEM that pre-installs Windows then you are already paying a fee for the Windows license. If you don't want to pay a fee for software then jus

• stonogo 12y ago
  My organization provides the disk images to the manufacturer for the computers we buy. This isn't about "paying a fee for software." It's about the fact that Microsoft has used its industry influence (and cozy relationship with Intel) to attach itself like a parasite to the process of bootloading in UEFI. We currently pay our manufacturers to install our signing keys into UEFI; this is fantastically expensive. It's a damn shame that it is literally impossible to buy a consumer UEFI device without Microsoft's keys in the image unless you pay to have yours put in. In short: it sucks that they are the default, and it sucks that Red Hat and Ubuntu rolled over on the issue and pay the (latest) Microsoft tax. I would have preferred a more flexible solution.
  • pbz 12y ago
    How much are we talking about?
    • pgeorgi 12y ago
      $99 (not sure for which time period) and the risk of losing your cert whenever Microsoft thinks you compromised their platform. Canonical uses kernels without signature checking, where you can just load new kernel modules. In principle this allows to hack into a "Secure Boot" Windows in a day or so (rough draft: have a kernel module, eg. kexec, that runs Tianocore, which can load and run Windows, and pretend the system is "secure" while there's random crap running in the background). I think Microsoft is silent about Canonical's use of Secure Boot for now, but they might change their tune (and once there's a PoC, they certainly will).