Re: [LAU] UEFI (was How to turn off hyperthreading?)

From: Chris Caudle <chris@email-addr-hidden>
Date: Thu Mar 28 2013 - 21:55:32 EET

> Message: 18
> Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2013 13:31:59 +0800
> From: Simon Wise <simonzwise@email-addr-hidden>
> To: linux-audio-user@email-addr-hidden
> Subject: Re: [LAU] How to turn off hyperthreading?
> Message-ID: <515132CF.4010901@email-addr-hidden>
>
> Because UEFI is designed to prevent hardware being booted unless it is
> into an unmodified and signed OS version

You are confusing UEFI, SecureBoot[TM], and Microsoft requirements
concerning implementations of certain options.
I have booted unsigned operating systems plenty of times on a UEFI system.

> and this hardware lock can be set up so it cannot be turned off

That would refer to a particular implementation of SecureBoot, which is an
optional part of UEFI. Not every system with UEFI necessarily supports
UEFI, most which do allow you to disable.

> For intel devices microsoft does not require UEFI to be set so it
> can't be turned off, for non-intel tablets it does. So Linux is
> locked out of any such devices.

So don't buy ARM tables with Windows-RT on them.

> and be very cautious of UEFI on any device since it means you no longer
> have control of hardware you thought you had bought and now own.

Not true at all. UEFI is just a specification for a boot environment. It
has a lot of cool features and is a lot more flexible than legacy BIOS.
If you are concerned that the secure boot feature might be locked down,
just make sure to ask whether secure boot can be disabled and how key
management is handled if you are considering buying a device with UEFI.

-- 
Chris Caudle
_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-user mailing list
Linux-audio-user@email-addr-hidden
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
Received on Fri Mar 29 00:15:01 2013

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Fri Mar 29 2013 - 00:15:02 EET