Summary: Windows 8 isn’t even in beta yet, and already the FUD is flying fast and furious. A small group of activists are whipping up controversy over the UEFI secure boot feature even as they admit the feature is “valuable and worthwhile.” Here’s the real story.
The FUD is flying fast and furious over Windows 8, and the OS isn’t even in beta yet.
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is organizing a petition-signing campaign over Microsoft’s announced support for the secure boot feature in next-generation PCs that use Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) as a replacement for the conventional PC BIOS. My ZDNet colleague Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols is urging his readers to sign the petition with a bit of deliberately inflammatory language, calling it “UEFI caging.”
The crux of their argument is that Microsoft is deliberately requiring a change in next-generation hardware that will make it impossible to wipe off a Windows installation and install Linux. They are wrong, and their effort to whip up public fury is misguided at best and cynical at worst.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/why-do-linux-fanatics-want-to-make-windows-8-less-secure/4100