Lenovo shipping new laptops that only boot Windows by default
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Hit Enter or F1 at the red Lenovo boot screen, go into the BIOS settings and find the setting and change it.
Until someone confirms that there is no such BIOS setting, there is no story here.
One weird trick to ruin your day, surely.
Edit: Looks like Windows has changed since I left it, please disregard this comment, thank you. The comment is left intact for context correctness.
You don't have to use TPM-backed BL if you don't want to.
> If you want security here you're paying attention to the values measured into the TPM, and thanks to Microsoft's own specification for measurements made into PCR 7, switching from booting Windows to booting something signed with the 3rd party signing key will change the measurements and invalidate any sealed secrets.
This is a new "feature" of Pluton Coprocessor.
At worst you'll have to enter a Bitlocker recovery key...
The last time I had this the key didn't even work, my work rotates it regularly so something must have been out of sync.. Every Linux update seemed to break bitlocker this way so I stopped dualbooting.
But yeah, it takes effort to have a working recovery option if your configuration isn't painfully average.
Also, for some people, they will trade-off the possibility of data loss as long as the data can be reliably destroyed if the data falls into the wrong hands. Maybe not for you, but it's there for enterprise.
You just have to enter your recovery key, that's it.
So the security benefit would be avoiding 3rd party and signed, but potentially vulnerable "bootloaders"
(Context: I wrote a significant portion of the infrastructure used to support Linux booting on systems with UEFI Secure Boot)
[1] Modern TPMs have 24 PCRs that can be used to measure different parts of the boot process, but the general expectation is that only 0-7 will be used by the firmware. On UEFI systems, PCR 7 contains information about what the platform's secure boot policy is, and which keys were used to verify the boot process. Booting something signed with a different key will result in PCR 7 having a different value, which is something that can be detected by tying encryption keys to specific PCR values.
> [...] the firmware defaults to not trusting bootloaders or drivers signed with the Microsoft 3rd Party UEFI CA key.
The whole point of secure boot was that there is a known set of "good actors" who are trusted by default, so that you can boot 1. Windows 2. common Linux distros - without any fuss, and 3. Any other system - with a few extra steps to prove you know what you're doing.
They've de-ranked the set #2 and threw it in the bag with #3, which doesn't really do much at all to improve security, but it does inconvenience and disincentivise the users from using a Linux distro on this hardware.
It's most likely an honest mistake, a sign of incompetence, or a dick move. Write them an angry letter and carry on.
Well no, it's not Lenovo really, it's Microsoft and its Device Guard / Secured Core that has done so. You can disable that just as easily as you can boot from an USB stick.
It doesn't seem much different from the F12 menu that lets you select an alternate boot device.
How exactly does this mean they "prevent booting alternative operating systems"?
At this rate it prevents someone from booting in a 'malicious' OS quickly.
Though I'm not sure if it's worth it, especially not if changing the bios is just a matter of seconds anyway (ordinary users probably won't put a password on it).
This is defense-in-depth level stuff.
System doesn't boot because PCR 7 is now different, just like it would be if you didn't have to do those additional (rapid) keypresses. This is not the threat model you're looking for.
That fob could then compromise the system when the computer was rebooted. The Lenovo bios setting being discussed would prevent that.
BTW Can you clarify if you think the feature from Lenovo is a good or a bad thing given your claim that it's very easy to disable?
If so, they need not come close to your laptop at all, certainly not close enough to change BIOS settings.
Wouldn't even call it "in depth", disallowing an alternative boot should be one of the first things any decent IT staff should do on any company machines, and therefore so should direct-to-consumer pre-installed tech like this.
99% of computer users are just consumers, nobody should have to think about security when they first get a new system beyond setting a password.
They do not sign everything nilly-willy; they refused to sign grub, that's why linux distros use shim.efi.
One could argue that distrusting platforms signed with MS's 3rd party certificate offers marginal additional security but that doesn't contradict the original point made about defence in depth.
But it certainly does damage the competition.
You're further limiting the number of images that can boot. This is a point you've made yourself so I don't really see how you need a further demonstration.
What you can argue is whether that marginal additional security is negligible enough be pragmatically worthless. And I'd probably agree with you there. However that doesn't dismiss the point that it does add a marginal additional security from the perspective of "defence in depth"[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_in_depth_(computing)
> But it certainly does damage the competition.
I'm not convinced it does in any meaningful way. Maybe (again) marginally it might but it's trivial to disable and most Linux users are probably used to jumping into the uEFI to enable booting from install medias anyway (I know I am).
I'd argue your statement here requires a greater burden of proof than the one you're arguing against.
That does not mean it improves security. If the images it allows to boot are less secure than those it prevents, it lessens security.
> I'm not convinced it does in any meaningful way.
It does booting Linux harder exactly to these users that it claims to protect.
So yes, it "protects" them from trying competing product.
> disable and most Linux users are probably used to jumping into the uEFI to enable booting from install medias anyway (I know I am).
Power users can do it; less experienced users consider that difficult, especially if they are not familiar with the concept. This all contributes to the image that Linux is difficult to install and use. Linux forums are full of discussions on this topic.
While it is just an artificial hindrance.
Would be it OK for Windows users to fiddle with UEFI settings before they can use Windows? If not, why is it OK for Linux users? Windows gets a clear advantage here.
I appreciate what you're saying but your logic doesn't really work:
- The only image allowed is Windows. Anything else is disallowed. Those images might be malicious (eg someone somehow stole MS 3rd party cert) or they might not. But not allowing them is more secure than allowing them because you're reducing your risk.
- Furthermore, saying some images allowed are less secure (ie Windows) than the ones that aren't (eg CentOS) doesn't mean this "feature" (if you can call it that) doesn't still add some additional security. Because (and at risk of repeating the above), this still blocks some additional images that might be a security risk. Hence it reducing your risk and hence it providing additional security from the perspective of defence in depth.
- The point of "defence in depth" is not to have a single security countermeasure that acts as a silver bullet against attacks. It's to provide a layered approach where cumulatively they protect you. This "feature" certainly fits that criteria.
This is why I said the question shouldn't be "does it provide additional security?" but rather "is that additional security significant enough to warrant the other impacts (such as those you've outlined?"
If you were to make that point instead, then I might agree with you. But to say it doesn't provide any additional security really misses the point of how security is evaluated.
> > I'm not convinced it does in any meaningful way.
> It does booting Linux harder exactly to these users that it claims to protect.
That's not a counterargument, it's a contradiction. I don't really see the point of a "oh yes it does" / "oh no it doesn't" pantomime style argument. If you are able to cite how the short activity of unchecking an additional UEFI option is significant enough to turn people off from the already complicated process of installing Linux then I'd be interested to see it. Otherwise we might just have to agree to disagree.
> Power users can do it; less experienced users consider that difficult, especially if they are not familiar with the concept. This all contributes to the image that Linux is difficult to install and use. Linux forums are full of discussions on this topic.
But how many of those people are buying ThinkPads to install Linux who are not power users? I'd wager if you were to draw a Venn diagram, those groups would barely, if at all, intersect. And more often than not, you have to alter UEFA parameters to boot from removable devices regardless of your setting in secure boot.
> Would be it OK for Windows users to fiddle with UEFI settings before they can use Windows? If not, why is it OK for Linux users? Windows gets a clear advantage here.
This I do 100% agree with. I never liked secure boot to begin with because of exactly this reason. Still dislike it now and certainly don't agree with what Lenovo are doing with regards to the original topic. But that is an entirely separate point to the one made previously about defence in depth.
Here I think lies the issue of our discussion. You're arguing against a technical point with an emotional claim of morality. While I completely agree with your point about morality, it's doesn't address the technical point you're trying to argue against.
> - Furthermore, saying some images allowed are less secure (ie Windows) than the ones that aren't (eg CentOS) doesn't mean this "feature" (if you can call it that) doesn't still add some additional security. Because (and at risk of repeating the above), this still blocks some additional images that might be a security risk. Hence it reducing your risk and hence it providing additional security from the perspective of defence in depth.
However, that is not increase in security. It is to increase the lockdown. And increasing lockdown is a poor proxy for quantification of security of specific images. It is easier, with that I can agree.
By the same token, locking out Windows images and allowing CentOS images also increases the security, but then the argument would not be about security anymore, but change to convenience of majority.
> If you are able to cite how the short activity of unchecking an additional UEFI option is significant enough to turn people off from the already complicated process of installing Linux then I'd be interested to see it. Otherwise we might just have to agree to disagree.
You had exactly that in the TFA. It invalidates PCR7, thus invalidating the TPM secrets. If the user uses Bitlocker and didn't save the recovery key, he just lost all his existing data by flipping that option.
It is another significant hoop the users have to jump; and it just happens to more complicate Linux usage. Those incompetent Linuxers, cannot make anything user-friendly...
> But how many of those people are buying ThinkPads to install Linux who are not power users?
Many normal users are not thinking about Linux when they purchase their gear; they will want to try it later, once they used the hardware for a while. If this wasn't a case and users would do research ahead of purchase, the majority of hardware problems under Linux would not exist.
> You're arguing against a technical point with an emotional claim of morality. While I completely agree with your point about morality, it's doesn't address the technical point you're trying to argue against.
My point is that it is not a technical issue. It is political issue masquerading as technical one. So a party A designs a system that favors products of party A and it just happens to thow a curveball at everyone else. Color me surprised. Real technical problem would not favor a specific party.
In this instance it is both
> And increasing lockdown is a poor proxy for quantification of security of specific images.
You do realize that locking stuff down is one of the core tenants for securing systems?
> By the same token, locking out Windows images and allowing CentOS images also increases the security
If your system is shipped to run Linux then yes, locking out Windows images would increase the security.
> but then the argument would not be about security anymore, but change to convenience of majority.
You're flip flopping all over the place with different topics. If you want to talk about convenience then I agree that locking systems down affects user convenience. It's a well known adage that security is usually a trade off between convenience and protection. But you weren't talking about convenience, you were talking about security. Which is why I've been talking strictly about security.
With the greatest of respect, you're coming off a lot like you don't really know this subject matter considering how poorly you're sticking to topic and how you're misunderstanding even many of the basic principles of security.
> It is another significant hoop the users have to jump; and it just happens to more complicate Linux usage.
I agree it's another hoop but you haven't yet demonstrated how it's significant despite me asking you to substantiate that claim a few times already. It feels to me like you're just throwing in adjectives for dramatic / emotional effect rather than having a rational conversation here.
> Those incompetent Linuxers, cannot make anything user-friendly...
Why should you care what other people think about Linuxers. Just use the platform you want to use instead of seeing this as some kind of holy war where you need to convert Windows users into Linux users.
> Many normal users are not thinking about Linux when they purchase their gear; they will want to try it later, once they used the hardware for a while. If this wasn't a case and users would do research ahead of purchase, the majority of hardware problems under Linux would not exist.
I've been using Linux since the 90s (and as my primary OS since XP was released and BeOS deprecated). I've never once shopped around for Linux compatible hardware and never once ended up with a machine that couldn't run Linux because of it. Peoples complaints about Linux compatibility are, in my experience, largely over told.
> My point is that it is not a technical issue. It is political issue masquerading as technical one. So a party A designs a system that favors products of party A and it just happens to thow a curveball at everyone else. Color me surprised. Real technical problem would not favor a specific party.
I think you're talking this far too personally. The simple solution here is you can just buy someone else's equipment instead. Getting angry on a forum isn't going to change anything (tbh neither is boycotting Lenovo but at lead doing that can give you some level of control).
Of course this is a mechanism to further advertise locking down general computing and nothing else. It is not new and security is a bad excuse.
That's incorrect. There is malware out there that can only work if you don't have Secure Boot enabled. The setting OP didn't disable, Device Guard, prevents the abuse of 3rd party signed bootloaders, another attack vector basically.
This is a step up for most people that ever stay on Windows and doesn't affect the slightest someone who wants to install Linux, they still have to boot from an external device or wish to change a few UEFI settings.
> Of course this is a mechanism to further advertise locking down general computing and nothing else. It is not new and security is a bad excuse.
Framing Secure Boot as some kind of Secure Boogeyman is not conducive, brings the discussion into tinfoil scenarios without any potential practical outcome (nobody is going to remove SB or DG).
As long as Linux vendors or people can get or enroll their own keys and disable any potential presets, it's a step up in security for everyone.
No, very few models sold auto-encrypt because most have *the very least* one untrusted DMA-capable bus. They might even have Device Guard enabled, but that's often insufficient. Not to mention other reasons why devices might be considered noncompliant, like lack of HSTI (though that's more common with desktop motherboards, of which some might even have all other features Device Guard consists of).
At this point in time, I'd consider auto-encryption rare. Maybe in five years and a few refresh cycles.
> A drive-by malware infection will be blocked by that. The ones who aren't in that scenario probably aren't using hardware that has this configuration, so it does nothing to protect them.
No, because previous point.
> who are targets of adversaries performing bootkit attacks, and who don't have a Bitlocker configuration that's sealed to PCR 7, I'd actually be willing to bet that you're going to find 0 of them.
Me finding someone getting actually targeted? Indeed unlikely.
Me finding someone with some especially nasty variant of Emotet? Not at all unlikely.
Device Guard enabled devices certainly make life harder for attackers, even if BitLocker is not (auto-)enabled.
That's your mistake here, you saw it in a large enterprise, the context is "average user".
> 3rd Party UEFI CA disabled by default who isn't disabling untrusted DMA-capable buses is selling snakeoil, and the ones who do aren't obtaining meaningful additional security by doing so.
Some of the buses that haven't been whitelisted are only internal, so technically not snakeoil, just won't let you auto-enable encryption.
This is a malicious thing to say considering the context (the same problem would affect MS OSes too), and for all practically purposes: since Windows 8 _all laptops_ that I have been able to buy had Bitlocker enabled out of the box (to my annoyance), not to mention that it was practically standard IT police for any large Windows shop.
Please, the current context is "average user" not an "average enterprise". In the latter case I agree with your assessment.
Microsoft doesn't signs arbitrary bootloaders, normally just the shim from RH that needs to have a list of earlier signed 2nd stage bootloader (versions) with now known security issues and reject them.
Debian, Fedora, ... use already trusted and signed bootchains, but they are excluded by choice without any benefit of security whatsoever.
IMO this smell again like classic Microsoft EEE...
So, we're literally at the point where we have to disable parts of chip (the Device Guard / Secure Core / Pluton) in order to boot _any_ non-MS OS scenario, and you are still claiming that this is scaremongering ?
At which point it stops being a "tinfoil" discussion ?
> As long as Linux vendors or people can get or enroll their own keys and disable any potential presets, it's a step up in security for everyone.
Microsoft _already_ promised that there would be a way so that non-MS OS manufacturers would be able to sign their software so that it would NOT REQUIRE fiddling with the system firmware in order to boot them, even with Secure Boot enabled. This is what the UEFI CA was for. You just insert a SUSE USB pendrive, use the firmware boot manager (or even Windows own' "boot from USB device" option in the Settings panel!) and that's it.
Your system is no more compromised by this CA than by allowing MS OSes in the first place. This CA is MS, too. They vet everything they sign. They blacklist stuff that could have been used to compromise devices. They have forced GRUB among many other distributions to align to their whims in order to be signed.
Removing this key and relenting on this promise (which actually they have already done several times) means that there is NO WAY for a non-MS operating system to transparently boot on Secure Boot hardware. You have to fiddle with the system firmware, battle with a lot of Scary Boot Prompts that will drive many users away (even advanced ones!), and with the easiest option likely being to disable Secure Boot altogether which per your own words will reduce the security level of users.
Not to mention of the unfair advantage MS has since their OSes will still boot transparently on these hardware, no matter what the firmware settings, no matter if the device came with no OS or even a Linux distro to begin with.
I have already claimed that MS revoking a distro's signatures is basically a death sentence for that distro. Here we have an article about a manufacturer revoking _all_ distro's signatures, and you claim that "this is not a conductive discussion" ? Give me a break.
Yes, because the same way you have to enable booting from an USB stick.
> At which point it stops being a "tinfoil" discussion ?
See my last sentence in my previous comment.
> Not to mention of the unfair advantage MS has since their OSes will still boot transparently on these hardware, no matter what the firmware settings,
Making a fresh install of Windows is equal in complexity, but it is preinstalled more often certainly.
> Removing this key and relenting on this promise (which actually they have already done several times) means that there is NO WAY for a non-MS operating system to transparently boot on Secure Boot hardware.
That's not a case with Secure Boot alone, it's a case with Device Guard. Device Guard you can disable. It's a toggle like all the rest, no promises broken.
> I have already claimed that MS revoking a distro's signatures is basically a death sentence for that distro. Here we have an article about a manufacturer revoking _all_ distro's signatures, and you claim that "this is not a conductive discussion" ?
Yes, because what you've said is not correct.
NO. It's not the same way. On most if not all devices I can boot from a USB stick literally from the Windows settings panel itself (search for Advanced Startup)! No need to even see how the system firmware looks like. Even on hardware as "locked down" as x86 MS tablets, I can hold Volume Down key during boot to boot from a USB stick. Again, enabled by default , and no need to even look at the system firmware !
From that point on, _if the UEFI CA signature is installed_, the distro's setup experience takes over, which is already under the control of the distro itself.
> Making a fresh install of Windows is equal in complexity, but it is preinstalled more often certainly.
"Equal in complexity" to what ? Most distros and even Windows install can be done with your eyes closed and hitting the enter key repeatedly, specially if you are just overwriting whatever was on the computer before. Installing OSes are typically designed to be as easy as possible. We've had decades of improvements here, both for Windows and non-Windows.
Changing settings and disabling secure boot on the system firmware is NOT designed to be as easy as possible. In fact, many times it is explicitly designed to be as scary as possible, precisely for security reasons! (with the intentional addition of Scary Boot Prompts). But worst of it, this part of the experience is NOT controlled by the OS vendor ! That by itself is already suficient to have a completely unfair situation. No matter how much effort you spend on making your OS install flow as smooth as possible, your user still has to fight the system firmware... but only if you're a non-MS OS!
> That's not a case with Secure Boot alone, it's a case with Device Guard. Device Guard you can disable. It's a toggle like all the rest, no promises broken.
The promise is that there would not need to be a toggle to switch. That's what's been broken!
> Yes, because what you've said is not correct.
And it is not correct because ..... ?
If you're just saying "it's not easy enough", well, that's a matter of opinion.
You do not even need to imagine "what I am proposing" because I am not proposing anything whatsoever: the MS UEFI CA signs non-MS operating systems.
MS just needs to not relent on its promises.
Do you really run a Linux that comes from a "vendor"?
Sucks to be you.
Giving the user more hops to jump through, when they want to try alternate (signed!) operating systems? Like, you have nice encrypted disk here, are you willing to lose it, when you flip the setting?
it's a very dangerous attack vector.
EDIT: writing from a Lenovo laptop where Linux it's the sole OS installed.
Allowing Linux to boot was a hundred times simpler than allowing DOOM to run on my 486 with 4MB of RAM.
And you need that for recovery purposes, at least.
The signature could come from a stolen certificate or a malevolent actor (are we sure the famous three letter agency has no way of signing binaries?).
Not trusting external and/or removable storage as a valid bootable source is a sensible default.
p.s. writing from a Lenovo laptop where Linux it's the sole OS installed.
The default for years was to boot from external storage, when the internal is not bootable. To change it, you would have to change boot priorities or manually use the built-in boot selector.
Not on my computers for the past 20 years.
If the default is not bootable a “no bootable device found” message appears.
computers should never automatically boot from external storage, unless the user wants to.
- try to boot the internal devices
- then try external (some even distinguish optical and key fobs)
- then try PXE
and only when all of these fail, message the user "no bootable device found".
And even then this message appeared
Press any key to boot from CD...
because computers should never automatically boot from external or removable storage
that's why a more modern version of the same message exists
It won't boot from USB if the internal drive boots, or unless I manually change boot order.
Having said all that, this comment is all anecdotal, much like yours.
The ubuntu usb key you are booting is safer than what you already got installed...
Lenovo does that for you
They are legally responsible.
> The ubuntu usb key you are booting is safer than what you already got installed...
Have you read my post?
I use Linux, I'm writing from Debian, on a Lenovo laptop.
It took 10 seconds to allow Linux to boot.
On this specific Z13? Or other model, which wasn't "improved" yet?
10 seconds at most.
no need for being sarcastic.
I do want to use secure boot and TPM2 (I do, currently). Just not with windows. Why should be secure boot windows exclusive feature? Until now, it wasn't.
There was no sarcasm.
it's a solution
it's only a matter of choice, there's no wrong choice, choices are personal.
You're complaining about something that's very easy to overcome.
> I do want to use secure boot and TPM2 (I do, currently). Just not with windows
You can.
just disable device guard.
> Why should be secure boot windows exclusive feature?
you are angry about the wrong thing
device guard and secure boot are different things, related, but different.
> device guard and secure boot are different things, related, but different.
The problem is that it can have potentially catastrophic impact. If the user enabled Bitlocker, and didn't save recovery key (it will happen for mainstream users), he can lose his windows drive when he tries linux.
As I wrote above, another extra-hop for those who would like to go off the beaten windows path.
it's a configuration option.
it's a bad workaround for you.
I disagree.
> If the user enabled Bitlocker, and didn't save recovery key
then the user is responsible of being incautious.
case closed.
Congratulation, you just invalidated the entire raison d'etre of both Secure Boot and this new Device Guard.
Still not perfect, but way better than without.
But worst of all: Superfish was actually _signed_ itself. MS has improved the level of vetting they do now, specially for kernel drivers, but how come anyone can still claim with a serious face that a signature requirement from one CA specifically improves security against malware _from that CA_ (or their associates) ?
I didn't say it was, you kinda ignored the context. The person who I replied to was asking how can they trust their Windows is genuine, I replied to them that the feature causing a stir here does protect against some types of malware.
It's a fair assumption that the next thing akin to Superfish would try to implant itself deeper, if given the chance, Device Guard does eliminate some of those ways.
> for preinstalled software such as drivers
If that driver is actually malicious then Early-Launch Antimalware alongside the kernel being protected, can get rid of it.
> There would be absolutely no difference on whether you used Secure Boot or not.
I wasn't talking exclusively about Secure Boot.
> But worst of all: Superfish was actually _signed_ itself.
Sure, now there's a toggle that won't trust some signatures that aren't as heavily vetted (amongst many other things). How is that "ridiculous" or "won't make a difference". Are you just looking for a reason to argue?
> [Device Guard] does prevent quite a few different malware preinstallation methods. Including the infamous Lenovo one.
Which is the infamous Lenovo malware "preinstallation method" ?
How would a signature system would have prevented malware that was literally signed by Lenovo _and_ MS from being preinstalled on a Lenovo OEM image shipped with Lenovo hardware ?
Yes, and I didn't call it a "kernel rootkit" as you said I did.
> How would a signature system would have prevented a malware that was literally signed by Lenovo _and_ MS from being preinstalled on a Lenovo OEM image ?
Because AFAIK Device Guard sets limitations to what WPBT can do. Not to mention it's likely that additional kernel and boot integrity helps against all types of malware.
If people in corporate environments want to disable this, they can set a BIOS password to keep others out of the boot menu.
Key quote here; a good practice is to never trust e.g. USB sticks.
What's the news here?
And this isn’t Evil Microsoft dictating what vendors can do. I can install Linux on my Surface device.
If the PC laptop would boot by default, off of any random USB plugged into the laptop, then HN mob would (rightfully) cry that this is a major PC security issues and that's how grandma could be pwned and get scammed, unlike a super-secure M1 MacBook which won't boot any other foreign OS by default without major hoop jumping.
If the PC laptop doesn't boot by default off of any random USB drive (just like a Mac), requiring the user to go into the BIOS and change this setting first, then it must be malice from Microsoft and the PC OEMs to restrict user freedom and destroy Linux's 2,43% PC market share.
It is ridiculous that people still downplaying Linux's PC market share when the latest version of Windows ships NOT ONE but TWO Linux emulators/virtualizers BOTH designed to allow you to run Linux binaries (desktop & Android) under Windows in the most user-friendly way possible.
Obviously this is because no one Windows customer cares about Linux or Linux software.
AT THE SAME TIME they take steps (and everyday larger steps) to prevent booting the same Linux on bare hardware, making their virtualization options more attractive for both the regular user and the advanced user.
At this point we're way past the "assume incompetence" point.
Mate, you're contradicting yourself here more than you are contradicting me. WSL and Linux as a main desktop OS are two completely different things, and nobody is downplaying Linux's desktop market share, which is <3% no matter how you try to spin it, those are the statistics.
How can anyone argue with this that MS couldn't care less about Linux's market share ?
With these changes, MS "accidentally" makes running non-MS OSes harder, and this includes both Android and desktop Linux, OSes for which they have as per the above shown an interest in capturing their market share. "Accidentally", the fact they become harder to run natively also makes their new virtualization features more attractive for users.
The "accidentally" part is what I don't believe.
It's definitely not what I'm arguing. Please stop making stuff up. This is where I will end our conversation. Have a good day.
> then it must be malice from Microsoft and the PC OEMs to restrict user freedom and destroy Linux's 2,43% PC market share.
I can only parse it in two ways:
* Sarcastic version: Linux's 2,43% market share is ridiculously small and therefore it is ridiculous to consider that Microsoft must be trying to destroy that market share.
* Non-sarcastic parsing: Microsoft is malicious and actively trying to destroy Linux's 2,43% PC market share.
They're just locking people and making it difficult for them to grow and explore other OS such as Linux.
That's a bad attitude!
For example :
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/sysinfo/acces...
https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/cms/page_26968097.html
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Unified_Extensible_Firmware...
There is also NtSetBootEntryOrder() in Windows ntddl
Entering the recovery key is enough but the problem is my work uses software to rotate the recovery key and the last time the stored key didn't work. Probably it was just rotated but not updated in the system yet. So I had to restore fully and I removed Linux.
Good to know, thanks! To be honest in this day & age of virtualisation I hardly ever dual-boot anymore.
And even then if they have the option, the entire process is designed to make the user feel as uncomfortable as possible while doing it. Disabling perfectly unrelated features (e.g. fast boot), going through Scary Boot Prompts, etc. are NOT acceptable requirements for booting a non-MS OS.
It's not the first time a vendor disables the MS UEFI CA signature by default (e.g. Microsoft itself has done it on ARM _and_ x86 Surfaces).
And that's ignoring all the general usability issues like the subpar battery life, the dreadfully terrible state of video playback, the touch screen constantly causing gnome to glitch internal state and get confused, etc...
On my Debian desktop I had a webcam completely take out the USB stack. Like all ports just dead, had to yank the power to reboot. I also had a btrfs array just go read-only for seemingly no reason after restoring from standby, and it wouldn't tell me why. After a reboot all was suddenly fine. Also it took an awfully long time to get that machine working after having been powered off for 3 months. If you go too long without updating, it seems all the package migrations just bitrot and break.
But yeah, year of Linux on the desktop. Any day now.
Debian is stable; I use it for my desktop and all my servers.
It is true that 'Ubuntu never was reliable,' at least in my experience; I honestly do not comprehend why so many folks base things on it.
In this case it's literally the OS offered by Dell for the XPS 13. It's as official an option as you will ever see, so the fact that such a pairing is still a broken disaster is pretty significant.
I could switch to a different distro, and I might. But distro hunting is exhausting. And it itself represents a never ending treadmill of churn. Like right now it seems like Fedora is a good option, and so are things like PopOS or Manjaro. But rewind the clock 5 to 10 years and some of those didn't even exist, or were not nearly as good of choices for "regular consumer usage." Whose to say I'm not just going to be stuck with yet another "oh, that distro used to be good but now it sucks, switch to foobar instead" in another few years? I'm more likely going to just switch it back to Windows if I'm going to get over the "back everything up & reinstall from scratch" hurdle. I at least know with Windows that I won't have to do a reinstall dance on this machine pretty much ever again. Having Linux for the better development options is nice, but with how good VMs are (and with things like WSL), running it bare metal kinda isn't all that necessary.
Keep in mind though that it was branched and package versions frozen ~6 months before that.
I like debian and use it on some things, but for a personal computer I always found it frustrating that the software was already half a year out of date on release day. Software getting released today wont be in Debian stable until 2023.
I run dual monitors on docking station with lots of peripherals.
Its my daily driver. Very happy with it.
Some Ubuntu LTS highlights:
Ubuntu 14: By default, Dell display backlights toggle on/off 30 times a second
Ubuntu 16: By default, BIOS boots broken due to boot files landing in too high of a sector
Ubuntu 18: By default, Solid State boot drives break because /dev/sda was hardcoded
Ubuntu 20: By default, Bluetooth and fans broken. Never fixed. Sleep broken but fixed.
Ubuntu 22: By default, NVidia graphics get 100% screen saturation after install.
Ubuntu isn't my daily driver. It isn't even a majority of my installs. I'm using it as a benchmark for conservative linux choices because smaller distros tend to be worse, not better. I know this because I daily drive a less popular distro, and I also distro hop for fun, and these all tend to be worse, not better. Besides, many hardware and software vendors target Ubuntu, and "works on Ubuntu but nowhere else" is a very common problem. Across the board, the Linus Tech Tips linux experience is the rule, not the exception. Many desktop linux users just have selective community-enforced amnesia.
Look, I am super thankful for the maintainers. I have gotten so much more value from them then they have asked in payment, but Linux is nowhere near Windows in the "just works" department. That is to be expected, given the price, but the rhetoric has gotten out of line with reality. Desktop linux still has a lot of rough edges and new rough edges appear at a rate that is not converging to 0.
"It works if you buy dedicated Linux hardware."
Yes. This is how you make it work.
I had my share of problems but none as bad as the ones you wrote. Currently there are two problems
1. Poweroff is reboot, so I press the shutdown button when the BIOS starts. It has been like that for ages through more than one LTS but I shutdown very few times per year.
2. The fn brightness control keys don't work so I made two hotkeys to run a X11 brightness control program that steps up or down the backlighting by 5 points, 0 to 100. This is probably on NVidia's driver.
Everything else is fine and that's great considering that probably HP never tested these laptops with Ubuntu.
Two nuisances is still better than the alternatives: the very same hardware with Windows or an Apple machine with OSX (I can't stand the UI.)
"It works if you buy dedicated Linux hardware."
Yes. This is how you make it work.
Also, literally my first sentence:
> your hardware choices
The biggest issue is that on the Mac side, it is really easy to get the OS and the optimal hardware together, and know that it "just works". For Linux, we have several small vendors, and a couple larger ones, that have Linux-advertised hardware, but most of the Linux optimal hardware doesn't advertise itself as Linux (Android phones/tablets, Chrome OS, etc).
So, it is not that linux does not work with a lot of consumer hardware. It's that most consumer hardware cannot be bothered to work with linux and invests itself in working with windows.
There is also a factor in-kernel vs out-of-kernel drivers.
There is Windows fast boot and UEFI fast boot, which are two diffent things. Sometimes vendors support only Windows fast boot, and at least then it is perfectly acceptable to force removal of that option.
Also, for example the purpose of secure boot is to prevent modification and changes on boot options and underlying files, which makes it also to be fine to force disabling, until you set new keys for your new OS.
For the record, Google has also been doing the same for a lot of time now (Scary Boot Prompts if you try to run Linux on bare metal, but all is fine if you run containerized Linux on top of Google's OS). They don't get a free pass from me, either.
T2 Macs had some complications with Linux, but that was due to a lack of support on the Linux side. My understanding is that recent kernels work fine.
I tend to see them as the easiest path when looking for a good opensource OS compatibility as many Linux and BSD devs are using them.
Linux is not an OS for the average user, it's for tech savvy geeks and an extremely small subset of those people too.
Nothing wrong with what Lenovo is doing here, there just are no other OS in the market.
In a nutshell, this is bad no matter how you look at it.
What you think as "not tech knowledge" is a serious skill that is severely lacking in billions of people.
The user needs the install medium, they need to get it, download it, create it, get a USB or blank CD/DVD, etc. They need to either have the courage (or curiosity or aloofness or determination) to modify their computer on such a drastic level, they need to understand abstract concepts, follow a written manual that uses those concepts, they need to recognize those abstract concepts as they are implemented on the computer they are currently tinkering with, and so on, and so on.
> In a nutshell, this is bad no matter how you look at it.
True, but it's bad because the whole "personal computing" thing is bad. This detail is largely irrelevant.
I recently installed Linux Mint and Windows 10. Linux was faster and easier to install, and has a friendlier UI. Have you seen the Windows start menu recently? It's cluttered with crap: I couldn't figure out how to do basic things with it, even searching was hard. You might do everything through the command line, but that's not the only way, the GUI does work.
Software's a different story, though a lot of things are online these days.
I was 12 when I first installed linux and barely knew what I was doing. I easily would have given up if I couldn't figure out that my machine had a secret hidden bios setting. I learned a ton from that experience, that easily could have been missed if I'd happened to own one of these anti-competitive machines.
Installing a user-friendly linux distro has gotten quite simple too, requiring only a couple simple steps using some clean tools. Modifying hidden BIOS settings is a significantly more complicated leap than the plug-and-play imaging tools available today.
Asking her to install Ubuntu herself, though, would be another matter entirely. Installing any OS (including Windows, since it's about as complex as Ubuntu these days) is way beyond the skill level needed to actually use it.
Only on hacker news would people be so far removed from real life that they would say 'Ubuntu is for the average user'
And as you said, most people would not be able to install it let alone the fact they likely have no idea what it is, so in relation to this post about consumer lenovo laptops, it's irrelevant and doesn't matter to the vast vast majority of people.
the average user does not install operating systems. linux is perfectly fine for the average user if it comes preinstalled.
The reality is: installing a replacement OS post-sale is never, ever going to be the way to grow linux marketshare, if that's what you care about (it shouldn't be, but some people live-and-breathe year of the linux desktop so whatever, you do you). Its a lot more important that it ship with the hardware, and extreme attention to detail has gone into making sure it works well with that hardware. Certainly, some vendors already do this. Moreover, I'd also argue its even more important that that hardware be modern and desirable; the only vendor I've seen pull this off is Dell (genuinely sorry, because I love what Framework/System76 are doing, but their machines look like branded OEM Clevos, because they probably are, or were in the recent past. I support them; I own a Framework; but only because I want them to do better, not because what they're doing today is enough).
[1] UEFI GUIs are an improvement, but they still have 95% of the same usability issues of text-based BIOS: 1000+ settings with no hint what each of them means, XTLAs only understandable by hardware+kernel experts, unfamiliar interaction patterns like not having a big friendly button to just save and reboot, and so on.
The war on general-purpose computing is well underway, and I fear we'll lose it. The billions of already completely locked down computers (e.g. every iOS device) does prove that people just don't care, and many (including people here!) will even defend it that they prefer it that way. Eventually we won't have a choice.
And then someone like Microsoft or whoever will buy their way in, corrupt a bunch of xbox users into thinking they're the good guys again, and we'll start again.
https://psref.lenovo.com/Product/ThinkPad_Z13_Gen_1?tab=spec
The UI even warns about not being able to use other OSs when it's enabled.
Linux is way too big to attack on servers today, but why WSL + this shenanigans feel so aligned?
Please feel free to counter. I'm not trying to start a fight here.
WSL is part of Microsoft's internal push to embrace open source. Its feature development.
Source: I work on the windows kernel and have met people who work/ed on WSL.
I have an honest question: How Microsoft is planning to restore trust in open source / free software circles?
We have seen pretty horrific things back in the day, and some of us can't trust you, even if we want, and some moves still relight this fire instantly.
I want a more friendlier computing environment overall, regardless of the OS we use, and want to be able to interop with other OSes on many levels (protocols, hardware, developers of said OS).
Does Microsoft has a plan for this?
Because Opening VSCode and slowly putting into proprietary domain & using GPL code in Copilot doesn't inspire trust, to be honest.
They're not planning to, not really. FAANG + MS are so big that at this point they stopped caring about Open Source and Free Software. The licenses are intentionally permissive that every tool can be used internally if they need it (Linux, bash, etc) plus even more permissive licenses like MIT can be used in commercial products. With web services even GPL can be used in their commercial cloud services.
They control a huge chunk of Open Source anyway through their contributors.
Plus the level they compete at is so far from Open Source that Open Source basically doesn't matter. It's all services and clouds now.
Open Source had its moment circa 2005, now it's just asphalt. Yeah, we use it everyday, but nobody writes home about it.
And regular users don't care.
What you can see from the outside that this is a move of the Visual Studio management to preserve their revenue stream (against which they get bonus etc). It is just stupid incentive management with the idea that the developer division is a profit center (which it should not .. in favor of Azure).
This secure boot topic is IMHO related to some product manager thinking that Windows laptop should be protected walled gardens like Apple devices are.
Source: I work on the Linux kernel and met people who work on Linux kernel.
WSL is part of Microsoft's push to eliminate Linux. Microsoft has always weaponized support. With one hand they support Linux binaries and with the other they force hardware makers to disallow Linux.
You'll lose these secrets and keys, forever. They may be private keys, decryption tokens and more.
You may not be able to regenerate them and get everything back.
Edit: Windows (license) keys are not in the TPM apparently, my bad, sorry. Keeping the above text for context correctness.
I have said may because I'm not using Windows on my systems for the last 20 years. IF they're not doing that, it's great, honestly.
I don't claim to be 100% correct, and kindly pointing that I'm wrong is enough to update my wrinkly muscle.
BitLocker uses TPM to store HDD encryption keys.
I suppose you need it to resize the partition without deleting your encrypted Windows data, at least.
iirc whatever cert grub was using has been blacklisted by Lenovo because of some recent security issue in grub (I can't find the details right now).
Whatever your stance on Secure Boot, this increases friction and raises the tech bar for people to install other OSes. I imagine that even a "power" user wanting to try Linux would be very confused and would probably give up after not being able to boot from USB.
So they don't trust software signed by Microsoft, but they trust an OS made by Microsoft?
Fedora, Ubuntu, and rEFInd were some of the first to get their own certs.
So it's more "They don't trust who microsoft trusts"
They do whatever Microsoft tells them to do, because the alternative is being forced to pay extra $200 per laptop sold.
I don't mean to merely refer to this particular issue/non-issue. I refer to the entire industry pre-loading Microsoft Windows on every new computer as IF this were the desire of everyone in the world.
I'm not suggesting that there isn't a market for Windows, I'm suggesting that an industry-wide forced-Windows-ONLY world is bad for the market, bad for consumers, and probably bad for OEMs... If it's some shady Microsoft OEM contract FORCING this to be the case, let's see an example. Didn't anyone challenge it?
Why don't Dell or Lenovo sell 10-20% Linux laptop preloads? Surely one can understand that developers and plenty of other users require Linux not Windows, right?
Why are Linux preloads expensive and odd? Why are more OEMs not ALSO selling Linux preloads?
So annoying!
This stuff largely doesn't exist for Linux, so they're missing out on this profit for any Linux preloads. It's also why you see Linux preloads mostly done by more boutique PC builders -- they've already charged a reasonable premium on the build.
As an anecdote, every developer that I know and I personally use Windows or Mac laptops and desktops. 1 guy in the group has a linux setup, but primarily uses Windows or Mac. While most of us have installed Linux on a device at some point, none of us use it as our daily driver. I'm talking about a network of roughly 100 devs that worked together or are a friend of a friend that chat on Slack daily. Yes, it is a small sample size, but it is relatively representative of what I've seen from devs at all of my previous companies over a 14 year software dev/engineering career.
Realistically, the reason OEMs pre-install Windows has nothing to do with the storage space or even with the logistics for developing a "choose your os" program. It's that they get extra revenue from bloatware contracts.
Boutique PC or even laptop manufacturers are more than happy to provide Linux. They do not make enough machines to be viable for bloatware contracts, so for them it is often instead more profitable to get extra buyers by catering to niche user bases like Linux users.
and as a tech person, i would not care which linux distribution they choose. let the OEM pick one and use that as their differentiation point, if that's of any worth. ubuntu, fedora, suse, pop! os, whatever. it doesn't really matter, as long as there is an alternative to windows.
This is a Secured Core / Device Guard requirement, different things and still optional.
> Trying to boot Linux from a USB stick failed out of the box for no obvious reason, but after further examination the cause became clear - the firmware defaults to not trusting bootloaders or drivers signed with the Microsoft 3rd Party UEFI CA key.
Isn't that precisely what the GP linked to? If it's just a matter of changing a BIOS switch then this is a non-issue imo.
However, navigating the scary BIOS menus, in a foreign language, with technical jargon even I can't always understand (and I do assemble my desktops from parts). Even keeping running Ubuntu (or Fedora or whatever) on a new laptop would probably not happen for many non-technical folks, if this sort of 1990s level dark arts boot time shenanigans were encountered.
At least that's my experience with relatives and friends who need computers for non-technical work or entertainment. Not all, but most have found Linux overall nicer user experience than Windows, so this would be a net negative development. Defaults matter, so this is definitely an issue in my opinion!
RDNA2 is the most powerful open source friendly GPU out there.
This has been a long time coming for us Linux fans.
Then there's stuff like this: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/692552/no-linux-wil...
Which is why I never upgrade BIOS.
Anyone know the obvious replacement offhand? Ryzen + runs Linux.
edit: article says 'default' a lot, are we talking flash new firmware to get something working or changing a setting like secure boot = off, as they're not really comparable.
They are not available yet, but my SO has a 840 G8 (Intel 11th) and it's a very decent machine.
The latter, you need to change a setting.
But it did take some fiddling with efibootmgr to fully purge the Windows shit.
MS still gets paid for the license, even when it's not used.
I tried installing Ubuntu on it and it was a nightmare. I am pretty sure Lenovo made this laptop so any OS other than Windows will not work well.
I had Ubuntu on dual boot for about 4 months. And I had to fuck with the BIOS at least a dozen times a week because something or other would stop working. Never happened to me on any other laptop I have owned.
Windows is a nightmare for me as a web developer. Ubuntu seems much easier to me and more intuitive somehow. Maybe I'll get an M1 Macbook or build a PC finally... :)
Nobody's perfect, and IBM has plenty to answer for, but Lenovo's been doing shady shit for years.
Thinkpads (T): Decent keyboards, fwupd. Everything else is mediocre to poor.
Dell Precision: About the same as thinkpads.
S76, Starlabs: coreboot, upgradable. Mediocre screen, keyboard, trackpad, audio etc.
Framework: Not enough to differentiate for the price premium.
I have mostly given up on this. If macbooks get gpu linux drivers, I am willing to jump ship.
I would say, overall, this is an excellent machine for doing work and build quality is excellent. It's a shame that Lenovo have such dubious ethical standards.
For some reason, people on HN praise Lenovo for Linux compatibility, but in my experience it is quite a bad experience. Yet, every time I bring up this subject, there is someone commenting about how their T430 runs just fine on Linux. Newsflash: the T-series is a 20(!) year old laptop, build by IBM.
Nowadays, the whole 'Linux compatible' thing with Lenovo seems like a marketing afterthought. My X1E is now a couple years old, and yet nobody at Lenovo bothered to provide any fixes for basic stuff like the ACPI driver.
Although, to be honest, I probably would have given up on Thinkpad/x86 entirely if they didn't offer AMD, because in my experience Intel mobile processors are terrible for pro work. I got so fed up with my T480s i7 thermal throttling at pretty much any task that I gave it away.
Repairable, upgradable, open and user-tinkering friendly. What is your requirement?
"After setting these two items, on the lowest brightness idle you will see the CPU hit C8 states on the second tab of powertop and the overall usage be roughly 2.5W if you have a single DIMM. Without ASPM enabled, the power usage will be between 3-4W."
Hanging around the Framework forums https://community.frame.work/ made me feel a lot more comfortable w/ them and I put in a pre-order for a DIY barebones system. To me the price difference didn't seem too bad (I have my own 64GB DDR4-3200 and 2TB PCIe 4.0 M.2s already).
Even if there's a premium, it's a bit weird to argue against the lack of "differentiation" since not another laptop manufacturer offers a parts store like https://frame.work/marketplace or the ability/support to swap or build your own expansion cards.
https://frame.work/marketplace/expansion-cards
https://community.frame.work/c/developer-program/85
Maybe it doesn't matter to you or others, but it's a heck of a unique differentiator IMO.
As for the marketplace, the keyboard, trackpad, case components, battery, and displays are also easily replaceable/repairable, which certainly matters a lot to me and I'd imagine would matter a lot to people who are looking at being able to upgrade or keep using the laptop longer term, or that are concerned about value/TCO.
I think their are enough people that would be sold just on the "repairability" angle, but the modding culture stuff is cool too. I'm a big fan of some of the stuff happening, like this Eink display mod: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=480xteW2wq4
If they don't care about user's freedom of choice and wants to lock them into that M$ thing, then i'll simply won't care about them either!
If people want a general purpose PC that runs OSs other than Microsoft's, they should buy their hardware from a 3rd-party company that isn't Microsoft, who explicitly make a point of supporting other OSs.
/s
And as others have said, as long as you can enroll your own keys this isn't really a bad thing. It improves security by default for the default OS shipped with the device. You have to go away from the defaults to use Linux anyways, so one more toggle isn't going to kill anyone.
I know the post is about the Z-series. Perhaps somebody already knows... It seems the AMD-based T14 Gen3 Thinkpads actually don't support Thunderbolt. Some people speculated, it is a firmware matter on AMDs side and will be added in the future but that doesn't sound reassuring at all to me. On the product pictures, you can clearly see the Thunderbolt lightning logos besides the USB-C ports but that doesn't mean anything.
99.9999999% of people will want Windows, if you are going to run a obscure OS then you would choose a machine that runs that best, so just don't buy one of these.
It's not up to hardware OEM's to support or even allow you to install some weird OS.
You can't do whatever you want with most things that you buy and most consumers do not care like most hacker news readers do, people just want something that does the task they bought it for and don't need to tinker with it.
Most people buying a laptop don't really think of the OS is running, they just expect it to be Windows and assume that it is part of computer itself.
Modern Windows instead delivers OEM payloads of various qualities over Windows Update.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenovo
Here it says 2.43% of desktop (non-mobile/tablet) OSes are Linux.
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide
This makes a dent.
You sponsor a company that SUPPORTS dual-booting instead of one that doesn't. That has double the effect of the price of your laptop: one company loses a sale, the other gains one.
Completely out of my hat but I would not be surprised if a good 20%/30% of Thinkpad users are Linux users.
Hard to confirm/infirm though.
But.
Lenovo are between a rock and a hard place. Because today, whether they like it or not, Microsoft does have that leverage. And if Lenovo come out too forcefully in support of Linux (desktop Linux in particular), they risk having Microsoft screw them over. So as much as they might like to start shipping every laptop with Linux pre-installed tomorrow, they really can't. So they have to be selective and strategic about how much they push in that direction.
Source: was a Lenovo employee for a while up through 2019. Little was said about this internally through official channels, but it was all well known. I won't say any more or go into any more detail to avoid the risk of violating some NDA or something that might technically still be in effect or whatever.
How?
The 3rd party UEFI CA key is implemented by the Shim, which is an attack vector. To be certified by default for the shim, the workflow is a github issue [0]. This is not necessarily bad, but a vector for social-engineering and more.
If an attacker is signed by the shim, he can execute trusted code on most machines without problems.
IMO it is better to leave this choice to the user to take this risk and enable the shim. Who installs linux should make this choice consciously
The machine supports Linux. You may have to hop into the firmware settings first.
I am never buying a Lenovo product again.
Framework[0] is looking more and more attractive as my next machine.
[0]: https://frame.work/
Framework laptops are looking more and more like the future for Linux users tho.
I doubt their anti-consumer behavior and security claims are some “rogue decision that will be reversed”.
Not sure if Lenevo actually does care at all.
A stark contrast with an HP laptop that died after the same daughter spilled sweet tea. There was no option for self-repair. It was possible to open the back lid and save the NVME, and that's pretty much it.
Framework > HP
I like your positioning of her being the recurring root cause :)
Surprisingly it all worked fine, apart from one thing... when attending meetings, they would turn the laptop ion at the start, and after about half an hour, someone would usually ask "Can anyone else smell banana?"
(I can't remember the model, but I think it was a small (like 10-12" or so) HP with an extremely slow, awful hard disk, maybe 1.8").
It's great in many ways but I just am very disappointed in the keyboard. It's really a lot less nice than the Thinkpad keyboards (even the new models). I wouldn't dream of buying Lenovo though.
It's a setting that can easily be turned off in the BIOS UI. One could argue that this shouldn't be the default (and I would agree), but in practice this is a none issue.
Disabling UEFI Secure Boot has been step 1 for installing Linux for as long as UEFI had existed, hasn't it?
What exactly is the problem here? I remember doing the same when installing Ubuntu on an ASUS laptop like 10 years ago.
The linked article is dumb, doesn't have any technical details, but has a stupid sensational headline.
Many people did a lot of work to ensure that Linux could be installed on systems with UEFI Secure Boot enabled.
"Note: The official installation image does not support Secure Boot (FS#53864). To successfully boot the installation medium you will need to disable Secure Boot."
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Unified_Extensible_Firmware... https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/53864
(Heck, I use my own keys on OpenSUSE even though my distro signs the kernel, because I want to use systemd-boot instead of mokutil since the latter is broken on my motherboard.)
Otherwise it all works on latest XPS and X1 Extreme.
Do you also log in to a desktop shell as root? Use "hunter2" as your SSH password? Run every random thing you download from the Internet?
Almost every sensible distro has been supporting secure boot for ages, and on things like Ubuntu it should just work out of the box, without the user ever noticing unless they dug. This is what TFA is complaining about - Lenovo broke it.
Unless there was so much FUD out there about security and signing this would just be a minor hurdle to learning how to do security properly.
Yes mom&pop will never do it. But frankly. MOM&POP NEVER USED AN UBUNTU DISK TO INSTALL A CUSTOM DISTRO. They just used the laptop as provided by a trusted 3rd party. That will never change.
This is part of the design problem of secure boot, it only works if everyone updates their trusted key sets and motherboard manufacturers aren't exactly known for their plentiful, easy to install, reliable updates.
Microsoft should obsiously add a setting to enable normal secure boot ("Windows only", "allow Linux", "off") but it's not as if secure boot is much of a safety system for your average Linux user. You can configure a whole secure boot chain in Linux but enforcing that requires a lot of work that's not easily accessible. You'll also need to ensure you hook into the right update functions so your nvidia/AMD proprietary drivers are signed correctly or you won't be able to boot with a working display.
My reaction is because through all the unnecessarily complicated security measures (like SELinux, UAC, Secure Boot, etc) we've taught people to run to google for "Disable Secure $WHATEVER", which is a good indicator that the technology has failed to actually secure anything.
The best security is invisible. OpenBSD gets it. There are no "how to disable pledge" blog posts, because 1. pledge(2)[0] can't be easily disabled (you'd probably need to make a custom patch for the kernel to make the syscall a no-op); 2. there is no user-visible difference to doing do, because as long as the program is doing what it's expected to do, pledge is 100% invisible. This is how e.g. Secure Boot should have worked from day one, for everyone.
I know I'm kinda contradicting my earlier post here, but there's no reason to disable Secure Boot in 2022 any more, even if it failed to provide the security guarantees it promised.
Not the entire picture here, that option is a part of a more holistic set of measures Microsoft calls Device Guard (part of Secured Core)
> it has no real use, except maybe delaying an attacker by a few seconds (and then again, that attacker won't access any data, so…).
It does prevent potential abuse of the signed shim that's not very difficult to get signed by. E.g. nobody can install the signed shim to rootkit a Windows installation.
How would that worked if combined with FDE + TPM ?
Though seeing a recovery screen will not inform you that your bootloader has been tampered with and by entering a recovery key you're basically authorizing the malware to run.
Does this not assume that the bios is not password protected, old dell laptops you need to jump 2 pins on the motherboard to bypass password protected bios and reset it. Don't think this works on newer ones.