New SecureBoot Concerns Arise With Windows 10

Written by Michael Larabel in Proprietary Software on 21 March 2015 at 07:40 AM EDT. 153 Comments
PROPRIETARY SOFTWARE
Linux users are getting frightened after yesterday's news of SecureBoot on Windows 10 potentially not being disable-able.

With the upcoming Windows 10 hardware certification program by Microsoft, they aren't going to enforce that enabling/disabling SecureBoot be an option. OEM motherboard vendors can still decide themselves whether to have a SecureBoot toggle within their BIOS/UEFI setup menu, but as long as it's enabling, Microsoft won't care if it can be disabled. Microsoft confirmed this change of heart over SecureBoot disabling at the WinHEC hardware conference in Shenzhen.


Most Linux distributions out there are now SecureBoot-supported, but there's still fears over Microsoft some day revoking the Linux key or otherwise locking out users from their own operating system. Those running custom kernels and other environments that aren't SecureBoot signed could also be a problem in the future.

Right now I'm cautiously optimistic though that most motherboard vendors will still offer the option to disable SecureBoot, so it's not a nightmare scenario quite yet. At least these days more IHVs are concerning themselves with Linux thanks to SteamOS & Co. Windows 10 computers will start surfacing later this year.
Related News
About The Author
Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

Popular News This Week