Summary: A new draft of Microsoft’s Windows 8 hardware certification specs confirms what we already knew: the new Secure Boot feature won’t lock out Linux on hundreds of millions of new PCs. But Linux backers are demanding the right to hack a new class of devices that doesn’t yet exist.

Lawyers have an old saying: If the facts are on your side, pound the facts. If the law is on your side, pound the law. If neither is on your side, pound the table.

A tiny but vocal minority of Linux fanatics are pounding the table today over a new security feature called Secure Boot that will be introduced in Windows 8, shrilly accusing Microsoft once again of a conspiracy to “lock out” Linux.

They are pounding the table because the facts are not on their side. Very large market forces are not on their side. Any prospective Windows 8 user should not be on their side.

So what’s really going on?

Linux won't be locked out of Windows 8 PCs, but FUD continues | ZDNet

“Non-ARM systems” means the classic x86 PC design. Roughly 400 million of these devices will be sold this year, and probably an equivalent number will be sold in the first year that Windows 8 is available. Every single one of those PCs will have the ability to run older versions of Windows, Linux, or a new operating system you create yourself. To do so, you will simply have to flip a bit in the system’s setup screen.

Nice and clarifying reading. Thanks