On Sat, Jul 7, 2012 at 9:44 AM, Rahul Sundaram metherid@gmail.com wrote:
On x86 systems, the ability to disable secure boot is mandated by Microsoft and needed to debug Microsoft drivers and since all the hardware manufacturers want to comply to this specification, you can be rest assured they will provide this functionality and once you disable secure boot (instructions for this will likely be in a Fedora wiki page
Yes, but notice the evil in Microsoft´s wording. Who wants to disable "SECURE" booting? Secure ´feels good´. Lack of ´secure´ does not. It´s like asking "do you want to disable secure landing"? on an airplane. ;)
Of course 99.9% of the people will think "why do I have to disable SECURE boot to run this? I don´t want my system to have INSECURE booting... please give me secure! in fact, I´d like extra secure if possible" ;). -even if they don´t know what secure booting means to begin with- ;)
Thus, for starters, RedHat´s decision to pay for a signing key is the practical approach, so users will be able to boot Fedora without tweaking their BIOS/CMOS settings.
But what I think could be challenged with antitrust regulators is Microsoft CHARGING for it. To keep it a level playing field MSFT should issue free keys to any OS development firm that asks for one, whether commercial or open source.
FC