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New PCs that will come pre-installed with Windows 8 will use a "secure boot" (UEFI) to ensure that unsigned code, such as malware, can be executed on our PCs. In this way, an operating system that is not approved by the hardware manufacturer and Microsoft will not be able to start (or at least not in a simple way, as we do today).
Fedora 18 It will be released at the same time as Windows 8 so to ensure that its release is not a failure, the developers and people in charge of this distribution (Red Hat) will create a boot loader signed (approved) by Microsoft. This will be an intermediary between the bootloader and grub2. |
For this loader to be approved by Microsoft, Red Hat will choose to use a Microsoft service called Sysdev (paying $ 99 for registration), although the money ultimately remains with VeriSign. Apparently this would imply that any GNU / Linux distribution can use the same key, no doubt an act of great charity on the part of Red Hat.
This is the first distro to take a step towards UEFI compatibility, although ultimately it is not well regarded by the community. The truth is that Microsoft should not have the luxury of approving or not who can run its software when loading the computer, but the alliance it has with many hardware manufacturers is also well known.
The cost is not important - it is only $ US99 - but isn't that principle the reason why GNU / Linux distributions have avoided Microsoft all the time?
Is what Red Hat did okay? Will other distros take these steps? Would a campaign against the use of UEFI that Microsoft proposes, succeed?
For further information : Matthew Garret's blog (Red Hat developer).