[mythtv-users] OT - UEFI, Secure Boot, Fedora and nVidia drivers

[Gary Buhrmaster]

On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 4:40 PM, Ben Kamen <bkamen at benjammin.net> wrote:
.....
> I've been watching it too -- irritated now that Microsoft has strong-armed
> manufacturers into UEFI ultimately having some level of say in what I do
> with hardware that isn't even running software from Microsoft.

Let us blame the right party for the right (or wrong) thing.

Microsoft pushed requiring secure boot UEFI being the default (for a
system that was sold as Windows 8 validated, which is a big enough
sales point to ensure that most manufactures would follow the path).
Others (including Intel) pushed for UEFI (where secure boot was an
option) since everyone (well, almost everyone) agrees that BIOS is
well beyond its useful service life (there were and are other options,
including coreboot, but UEFI had the support of the big players).

You are correct that almost all commercial PCs sold in retail
will have secure boot enabled (since a high percentage of them
are sold with Windows pre-installed).  Whether the mainstream
manufactures will allow it to be disabled (easily) is as yet unknown.

As with much else, this debate is likely targeted much more so
at the "consumer" market rather than (what is more prevalent
on this list) the tinker/developer/hacker market.  People using
Linux (and on this list) are far more likely to have been in the
Bios config screens, and will not have a problem disabling secure
boot (if the manufacturer allows it) to load their OS of choice.

Gary