On 03/25/2013 07:31 PM, Simon Wise wrote:
On 26/03/13 06:25, John Murphy wrote:
On Mon, 25 Mar 2013 22:05:42 +0100, Jeremy Jongepier wrote:
I just don't get the fear of UEFI?
Because UEFI is designed to prevent hardware being booted unless it is
into an unmodified and signed OS version, and this hardware lock can be
set up so it cannot be turned off, and for some devices (eg non intel
tablets) microsoft (for example) will only certify them if they are
locked this way to run only microsoft signed software. So most windows
tablets can never be loaded with anything not signed by microsoft ...
that is they can now be "trusted" not to have anything else running on
them ... for example something modified by the person who thinks they
own the device, perhaps linux, perhaps a patched windows, perhaps some
system not so compliant with the demands of media distribution companies
as the standard windows is.
Fortunately this would be a major pain to windows users on a PC, since
older versions wouldn't boot ... but given windows on a tablet is new,
and a much more locked down device than a PC, and perhaps also that the
hardware manufacturers of tablets are more willing to go down this path
than PC manufacturers, then this is applied to tablets (where they can
probably get away with it) but not PCs. For intel devices microsoft does
not require UEFI to be set so it can't be turned off, for non-intel
tablets it does. So Linux is locked out of any such devices.
Not good if you like to run linux, so don't buy windows tablets of
course ... and be very cautious of UEFI on any device since it means you
no longer have control of hardware you thought you had bought and now
own. What you do with it is limited by what the UEFI settings let you
do, and in some cases you are unable to change these settings.
Zareason sells their systems with Linux installed. Your choice of Linux.
So no concerns about UEFI.
I've also been told that if you buy an UEFI system with Windows 8
installed, then turn of secure boot, you have to reinstall Windows 8.
--
David
gnome@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
authenticity, honesty, community
http://clanjones.org/david/
http://dancing-treefrog.deviantart.com/
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