Garrett: Secure Boot and Restricted Boot

Garrett: Secure Boot and Restricted Boot

Posted Mar 27, 2013 22:24 UTC (Wed) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648)
Parent article: Garrett: Secure Boot and Restricted Boot

I, for one, wish to commend Matthew for his insightful and enlightening blog post. Since I'm the one who suggested the Linux users file EU complaint article to LWN, I assume some responsibility for how many misunderstand Secure Boot (myself included) and seem to be viciously attacking Microsoft. (A generalization on my part, based on the comments above, on Matthew's blog and also on the LWN summary for the EU Linux users article.)

Microsoft may have been the one company to impose this spec, and the HW manufacturers are (obviously) going to kowtow to MS's demands, but MS isn't the appropriate organization to which aggrieved users should be pointing their fingers (as Matthew has pointed out on several occasions).

Microsoft has had its good name sullied for years for software issues (shoddy device drivers, out-of-spec hardware, malware, etc.). I've noticed more often than not that MS gets the blame when 3rd-party software crashes (because the developers hideously abused the "system"). I can't blame MS for imposing Secure Boot (although I question their draconian restrictions on ARM); seems like MS is merely trying to eliminate one more attack vector for malware.

Thank you, Matthew, for your tireless efforts in getting a workable solution for Linux users with UEFI Secure Boot hardware, and also for your work in educating and enlightening the FLOSS community on what Secure Boot and Restricted Boot are (and aren't).

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