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Concur with other comments re: restricted boot

Concur with other comments re: restricted boot

Posted Jan 4, 2013 14:34 UTC (Fri) by wookey (subscriber, #5501)
In reply to: Concur with other comments re: restricted boot by gregkh
Parent article: The H Year: 2012's Wins, Fails and Mehs

I care about ARM UEFI systems because there are going to be lots of them. Just as many as x86 one day (very probably). It's vital that people have the same rights to install the OS of their choice as on x86.

At the moment OEMs cannot let people install their own keys _and_ enable Windows to run on their hardware (right?). They shouldn't have to make that choice. OEMs and purchasers will have to choose whether they want to make/sell/buy 'ARM hardware for Windows' or 'ARM hardware for everything else'. ARM servers are general-purpose in just the same way x86 ones are (and will look almost identical from the software perspective once both are booted with UEFI). Dominent-vendor rules like these are at best very unhelpful.

Hopefully it will keep both OEMs and pruchasers away from Microsoft until they are forced to change the rules, but it could turn out to just be a massive pain for everyone.

Anyone who says 'It's OK because I can install my keys on x86 - ARM is just for devices where no-one changes the OS' is being very shortsighted.


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Concur with other comments re: restricted boot

Posted Jan 4, 2013 15:41 UTC (Fri) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]

Microsoft doesn't currently support anything but Windows RT on ARM, so from the server side there's no problem for at least a couple of years yet.

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