Some people call Linus Torvalds "rude". I call him "honest".

[Antonio Sun]

On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 2:49 PM, Lennart Sorensen <
lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> As for booting, to get a machine certified to carry the 'windows 8' logo
> sticker, it must use UEFI instead of a BIOS, and it must have secureboot
> (an optional UEFI feature) enabled by default and it must have microsoft's
> signing key preloaded as a valid signature checking key.  It will then
> when booting check that the bootloader code has a valid signature and
> has not been modified, and then the boot loader will do the same for
> the kernel and drivers and other bits it loads.  This is supposed to
> mean a virus can't modify the bootloader or other windows components
> without being detected.  So non official code simply won't run.
>
> This will of course be fun when a virus does modify the bootloader and
> you are left with an unbootable PC rather than one with a virus that
> needs cleaning.
>

> As a side effect (that I imagine Microsoft likes), by default these
> 'windows 8' certified machines won't boot any OS that doesn't have a
> bootloader signed by microsoft's key.


Thanks for the detailed explanation.  I sense reasons to avoid windows 8
all over the places. Those poor guys who got the 'windows 8' logoed PCs, do
they know exactly what they are buying? well I guest most of them don't
care, but , can they still boot their old CD/DVDs?

I'm considering to buy a new PC, but I guess I better to wait until I'm
able to boot Linux from it, and the booting easy enough so that I don't
have to jump through several hoops to make it happen.

Thanks
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