141–147 of 147 posts
Go, Linus. Let kernel NOT even boot on these secure boot machines, see who runs back crying first.
Dells and HPs of the world are already hurting from Windows 8 disaster. Let them lose some of the server market and all the commercial customers that buy PCs and give them to devs who install Linux right away.
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How about multi-boot? From my understanding that isn't going to be possible anymore.
It is possible with disabled secure boot. Windows 8 doesn't need Secure Boot or even UEFI to work. It's only about the "Certified" sticker. And theoretically, Grub (or something) can have the key signed.
More importantly, how much would this sway a decision of a consumer (one place where I find 'consumer' better than 'customer') who sees two similar laptops with very similar prices except one say "With Windows 8" and the other says "Windows 8 Certified".
Could the manufacturers not come up with their own marketing campaign or something like "OpenSource Initiative Certified" or something like that[obviously they can't use OSI's name but you get the idea].
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Having firmware locked to only work under a given OS. It's pretty much a textbook definition of anticompetitive practice.
First of all, the firmware does not prevent you to use other OS. Only one function is locked to Windows and it seems Microsoft is open to allowing others to boot with it [sidenote]. Secondly, every single iPhone/iPad is locked to boot iOS; most of the phones with Android are locked as well. (And obviously Windows phones are locked too). And by locked I mean locked, not few clicks away from using the device as you wis…
This should never be accepted, full stop.
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It is possible with disabled secure boot. Windows 8 doesn't need Secure Boot or even UEFI to work. It's only about the "Certified" sticker. And theoretically, Grub (or something) can have the key signed.
I think I'm largely out of touch with the average computer buyer of today but is it literally only about a sticker? What if instead of "Windows 8 Certified" the manufacturers put a "With Windows 8" and completely disregard the entire secureboot fiasco? Is there an option to NOT play Microsoft's game at all? I assume that MS would allow manufacturers to bypass the SecureBoot requirement if they don't want to avail of…
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Responding from a French point of view, so that might not match Brazil (but does match Germany): you can not tie a material product with an immaterial one, if you do not also sell the material product as a stand alone. You cannot sell a car with an insurance if you don't sell the car alone. You cannot sell a phone with a plan if you don't sell the phone alone (see: iPhone 1 release in Europe). You cannot sell a compu…
You cannot sell a computer with an OS license if you don't sell the computer alone (you're not buying the disk, but the license to use the software on it). Sure you can. I bought a very nice MacBook Air in Paris a couple of months back - and you most definitely can't buy a MacBook Air without OS X.
You cannot drive over the speed limit in France, but "sure you can, I just did this morning".
There are plenty of court cases, all won by the buyers, where the complaint was that the computer was sold with a windows license, and couldn't be bought without.
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Responding from a French point of view, so that might not match Brazil (but does match Germany): you can not tie a material product with an immaterial one, if you do not also sell the material product as a stand alone. You cannot sell a car with an insurance if you don't sell the car alone. You cannot sell a phone with a plan if you don't sell the phone alone (see: iPhone 1 release in Europe). You cannot sell a compu…
You cannot sell a computer with an OS license if you don't sell the computer alone (you're not buying the disk, but the license to use the software on it). Sure you can. I bought a very nice MacBook Air in Paris a couple of months back - and you most definitely can't buy a MacBook Air without OS X.
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For the average linux user, key signing isn't really a big deal, imho. Running as a user and protecting root without running unnecessary services is your first step, after that it's all kind of iffy. Signing something from an untrusted source (Having dealt with having to revoke a bunch of Microsoft signed stuff not too long ago, I assure you Microsoft is not infallible) doesn't buy you a whole lot. If you build a dri…
For the average linux user, key signing isn't really a big deal, imho. It isn't a big deal to the average user because os internals aren't a big deal to the average user. Never the less, linux hasplenty of industry standard security measures like IOMMU support, DEP, ASLR, containers, RBAC, seccomp and so on. You can't expect the average user to know what technical countermeasures they need anymore than you can expect…
I don't think running as an unprivileged user as often as possible is out of date. Yes, there are plenty of attack vectors, but there's no reason to make it easy. You could run your browser as a different user, so it can't ever see your sudo commands or whatever, just common sense. I'm not familiar with X window exploits to sniff credentials, but I would assume the application being run as a different user than the x session would add difficulty?
FYI my day job is dealing with Windows, driver signing/loading issues, and what have you. I have very low expectations for the security-mindedness of average users. Many people will click on a link after an AV "warning", because "Hey, the AV will stop it if it's really an issue!"