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Comment by daeken | Hacker News Reader

This could block Linux from booting, but realistically speaking, does anyone believe that will happen? It seems very, very unlikely to me that you won't be able to disable signing restrictions at the firmware level.

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I'm told that at least one vendor will be providing some systems that don't allow you to disable the requirement.

I'm told that at least one vendor is going to lose a lot of money when its investors find out about this.

I doubt that investors would be savvy enough to care but it would be a stupid move, nonetheless.

Besides, the server is where Linux matters, not consumer hardware.

Investors are savvier than you'd think. Even on a rumor that the vendor is doing an exclusive lock-in with MS, I'm sure you'd see the stock price dip. Investors spend all their time looking at news reports in their target industry, so I'm sure they'll notice something as big as this.

That depends... how about if it were presented as "our new models come with a feature that will dramatically lower support costs"?

Well I'M told they WON'T.

mjg59 wrote the original blog post - he might know more than you.

But what product will they be putting the lock-in on? It may not matter, as we've seen with mobile OSes which, from the perspective of the median buyer, are locked in.

It makes somewhat some sense that MS will do this especially since Hyper-V (VM Hypervisor) is now built-in to Windows8. "Want Linux? You need Windows too..."

Other options?:

- DIY with OEM materials - Apple :-P

Didn't some manufacturer mess up ACPI stuff on purpose so that a non-Windows OS would have power saving / noise trouble?

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