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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 06 2012 @ 02:26 PM EDT |
| [www.internetnews.com]
The article
whilst covering the subject a lot better than some I've read is
making an
assumption that I think might be fatally flawed.
I have to wonder just how
much longer will be able do DIY whet it comes to
making our own PC's. All
Microsoft has to do is tell the likes of Gigabyte, Asus
etc that they can't sell
a new Motherboard unless it has a Windows 8 license.
The advent of secure
boot and signed keys means that they are going to get far
more control of what
we run on our equipment. They could tell the UEFI makers
that DIY MBO's can't
have their key in them OR theirs can be the only Key
allowed.
I think that
the resellers (newegg, aria etc) will vote to have the MS key only
solution. At
least that way they will continue to get some revenue.
I just get this
feeling that will happen within 18 months of the release of
Windows 8. Perhaps
around the time SP1 is released.
I really would like to be proved
wrong.
On the bright side, if Windows 8 proves to be the flop many of us
here hope then
it might well be time for 'the year of the Linux
Desktop'.
---
Ubuntu & 'apt-get' are not the answer to Life, The
Universe & Everything which
is of course, "42" or is it 1.618?
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 06 2012 @ 02:51 PM EDT |
If UEFI motherboards are set such that it can not be set to allow whatever
distro of Linux I choose to install, then I won't be buying said motherboard.
Period. End Of Line.
Instead I'll pick up perhaps:
An XO Computer (I'd actually like one
of these but missed my earlier oppurtunity and am hoping for another).
Or
perhaps:
Qi
Hardware - a sudden flood of requests from open source enthusiasts could
make an open source hardware company quite profitable
It really would be
amusing that MS' attempts to enforce everyone to use MS software ends up not
only pushing MS to a niche market, but all the main hardware manufacturers we
know of today and elevating all new hardware manufacturers into the main
stream.
Personally, I'd like to see such a future occur.
And -
sadly - because Fedora has decided to move in the direction of UEFI and paying a
MS tax, it will be relegated to the "pile of Linux distros that can no longer be
used". It'll be grouped in with the likes of Suse and Caldera.
That
$99 tax.... anyone have a very clear understanding of whether that's a
one-time tax by Fedora or whether that's an on-going tax that will be added to
every computer?
If it's a one-time tax by Fedora, then that certainly
lessens the up-front financial costs. However, I simply don't trust MS not to
pull something like:
Ooops... there was a problem with the signing key, so
all that hardware simply won't run Linux, my bad!
Nor do I trust them not
to modify it in the future if it does work in the current. Nor do I trust them
not to change something on their servers to suddenly break Linux computers. I
could go on with the things I expect MS to pull.
RAS[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 06 2012 @ 07:59 PM EDT |
There are going to be situations where UEFI is simply not workable, which means
there will be boards that don't support it. These will suddenly become a quite
popular movement.
And once the movement starts, some enterprising company will start producing a
full line of boards just for DIYers, who will build more usable and more
productive machines, and then M$ will become the poor man's "kind of like
an OS but more limited".*
A year later we'll all be laughing at how this was a good thing... ;)
* Not that I consider Windows much of an OS now...[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Kilz on Wednesday, June 06 2012 @ 08:44 PM EDT |
One of the ways I help my church and our fellow congregations
is to put old donated computers back into service. Most of
them are windows machines which I wipe down and install Linux
on. Im sure there are others that do this for
schools/churches/etc.
But what will happen with the UEFI computers? Will we still
be able to re-purpose old hardware that has UEFI? Will there
still be people to sign the UEFI for old computers? [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: symbolset on Wednesday, June 06 2012 @ 11:03 PM EDT |
I liked RedHat. I bought that way back when (3.8? 4.2? I forget). Quite a
few versions. Never, ever a Linux distro that has submitted to any Microsoft
permission that could be withheld, nor one derived from it, will run on my gear.
That's just not going to happen because I know where that leads. If I'm going
to invest my precious time learning something, it's not going to be something
that has agreed to be terminated at a later date and wipe out my
investment.
Microsoft's tactics have foreclosed enough paths and destroyed
enough innovation already. The human cost is immense. Can you imagine how many
engineer man-years were wasted just learning MSJAVA? You could build pyramids. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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