Posted on Friday, January 13 2012 @ 21:32 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
ComputerWorld
reports Microsoft has revealed that Secure Boot will be a requirement for all ARM based devices with Windows 8, thereby making it a lot harder or even impossible to install Linux on ARM hardware systems certified for Windows 8.
This confirms that it is indeed possible to disable Secure Boot - but only on non-ARM systems (i.e. traditional PCs.) In other words, it would appear that Microsoft is still locking out GNU/Linux from installation on ARM-based Windows 8 machines.
So this leaves me confused. The document was published some time after Microsoft's post where it states "Microsoft does not mandate or control the settings on PC firmware that control or enable secured boot from any operating system other than Windows", and yet it seems to contradict it. So what's going here? Was Microsoft's blog statement only about non-ARM systems, as the new documentation suggests? And if so, why the discrimination? And finally, is ARM really happy to see Microsoft apparently locking out GNU/Linux from its systems in this way? Let's hope Microsoft can clarify this situation as it did on the previous occasion.
