> So.. really, who cares?
Consider yourself lucky if you don't need to care.
It's a mechanism to lock down a computer to only run "trusted" OSes. Who gets to decide which OSes are trusted? Does Arch have lobbyists?
It's just one falling domino in a series of falling dominos, where maybe one day you don't get to run Arch anymore.
This stuff really can go either way. People were allowed to record TV using VCRs in the 90s. Ripping CD Audio onto hard disks? Dunno. Copying DVDs & Blu-ray onto hard disks? Definitely not. What about running software on a phone? Better "jailbreak" it.
> my Arch Linux desktop that boots with UEFI is functionally identical to one that boots with BIOS
Stallman agrees with you that you don't get anything from UEFI: "This is not a security feature. This is abuse of the users. I think it ought to be illegal."
He also made the claim, "Microsoft demands that ARM computers sold for Windows 8 be set up so that the user cannot change the keys; in other words, turn it into restricted boot."
Crazy?
> For logo-certified Windows RT 8.1 and Windows RT PCs, Secure Boot is required to be configured so that it cannot be disabled.
If they wanted to lock it down they could have just used coreboot and didn't build a big honking framework deliberately designed to allow running different systems that have no pre-existing knowledge about the machine.
Just like many other closed platforms of yore, or how in practice Macs of today work (their UEFI is, plainly, not to spec - a lot of hackintosh work is figuring out "what Apple did wrong this time")
It's a mechanism to lock down a computer to only run "trusted" OSes. Who gets to decide which OSes are trusted? Does Arch have lobbyists?
It's just one falling domino in a series of falling dominos, where maybe one day you don't get to run Arch anymore.
This stuff really can go either way. People were allowed to record TV using VCRs in the 90s. Ripping CD Audio onto hard disks? Dunno. Copying DVDs & Blu-ray onto hard disks? Definitely not. What about running software on a phone? Better "jailbreak" it.
> my Arch Linux desktop that boots with UEFI is functionally identical to one that boots with BIOS
Stallman agrees with you that you don't get anything from UEFI: "This is not a security feature. This is abuse of the users. I think it ought to be illegal."
He also made the claim, "Microsoft demands that ARM computers sold for Windows 8 be set up so that the user cannot change the keys; in other words, turn it into restricted boot."
Crazy?
> For logo-certified Windows RT 8.1 and Windows RT PCs, Secure Boot is required to be configured so that it cannot be disabled.
> https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufactur...
edit: Just thought of three more battles currently going on:
* Oculus headsets now require Facebook logins.
* youtube-dl just got blocked on GitHub
* Iranians and GitLab