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Comment by VyseofArcadia | Hacker News Reader

I'm less worried about software freedom these days. Desktop free software has been solid for ages now, and we are starting to have SaaS replacements with the rise of the fediverse.

I'm worried about hardware, though. My wife got a new Dell laptop about six months ago, and despite my 20 years of installing Linux distros on every piece of hardware I can, it still took me hours to jump through all the hoops to get Ubuntu on the machine.

Microsoft is locking stuff down, hard. I'd be willing to bet that when Windows 12 releases, it will require that the PC be a closed platform that does not allow users to install another OS. MS sees people just living with the closed by default mobile ecosystem and wants something similar for PCs.

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A lot of (almost all) software has dependencies on a handful of organizations. As ideology creeps into everything, I think we're way closer to lots of commonly used software being rendered difficult ot use for wrongthinkers. In particular most of the common machine learning / AI stack, which is subject to the current push to "pause", regulate, whatever.

Software and hardware freedom are inseparable. If you can't install free software because proprietary software locks you out, it doesn't matter that KDE is amazing nowdays.

Hence why free software i.e. Libreboot, free firmware etc. is imo as important as ever.

I agree, but I worry we're leaving the age where an average Joe with no particular computer skill can install free software. My wife, not really a computer person, installed Ubuntu on her old laptop by herself just fine. She didn't even tell me, I just walked by and saw her using GNOME one day. But for this new laptop, she had to call in a ringer.

Libreboot et al are important, but meaningless in the grand scheme of things if you have to be a serious computer geek to be able to install them on your own hardware.

The battleground is hardware manufacturers yielding to Microsoft's requests. Lock down the bootloader, lock down the bios, lock down the firmware, before you know it, it's as hard to install Ubuntu on a Dell as it is to install LineageOS on a carrier locked Samsung Galaxy.

We need manufacturers that say no to Microsoft and keep making unlocked PC hardware.

Sorry but I simply must ask; what were the hoops you had to jump through? I installed Fedora on my moderately recent thinkpad x13 (Ryzen 5850U w/ NVME, USB 3, and all the new fixings) and it effectively "Just Werked", about as easily as installing Linux has been on all my machines since core 2 duo-ish.

We had to work around all the Secure Boot bullshit. It wasn't terrible once we figured out that was the problem, but when we expected it to just work, it turned into a lot of frustrated searching around on the internet to figure out why stuff wasn't working.

https://www.xda-developers.com/dual-boot-windows-11-linux/

I've found Ventoy [0] really great for automation of all those Secure Boot hoops. I remember my installation screen asking me if I want to setup the Secure Boot bullshit, I just said "yes" and everything worked fine.

Plus, it can hold multiple distribution images (including Windows) and let you choose at runtime which one you want to install. You just paste the ISO file onto the filesystem (which is NTFS or exFAT or something, so there's no file size limit). And since that's an ordinary filesystem, you can also use the spare space to move any files between computers as if it was ordinary storage drive.

[0] https://www.ventoy.net

I'll be filing that away for future use, thanks!

I think my point still stands, though. Users shouldn't have to work around secure boot. Secure boot is making Linux adoption more difficult for casual users for no good reason.

If anyone has a use case for secure boot outside of an enterprise setting I'd love to hear it.

> Secure boot is making Linux adoption more difficult for casual users for no good reason.

Agreed. I think the Steam Deck is also showing how important hardware with pre-installed Linux is.

Given the progress of Asahi, Apple (desktop) hardware seems to be doing quite well on the openness front.

You'll be happy to know that they've partnered with Louis Rossmann and are offering free repair workshops in Austin: https://futo.org/workshops/

Thankfully, RISC-V seems like it will be ready just in time ?

My sister bought a couple of low-end HP laptops last year, the kind meant for college kids. The damned things wouldn't boot w/o connecting to your MS account!

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