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Comment by Aardwolf | Hacker News Reader

Apparently the thing making it to refuse to install is "TPM 2.0".

I'm not a Windows user but a Linux user, and this simply makes me wonder: will TPM 2.0 in any way make PC hardware impossible to install Linux on? I remember there was a windows TPM related thing that would lock in the hardware to only boot windows, is this it?

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The TPM 2.0 scare was a different one: that websites would start requiring the use of TPM 2.0 to prove that you're running unmodified Windows, which would make Linux users unable to access these websites (and even running legitimate Windows on a virtual machine wouldn't be enough, these websites would accept only Windows running directly on the bare hardware).

That is, the use of TPM 2.0 would not lock the hardware to only boot Windows (it's SecureBoot that would do that, once Microsoft stops signing Linux bootloaders and starts requiring that OEMs forbid disabling it, like they already did for ARM laptops), but the use of TPM 2.0 would lock Linux users out of important services, in practice forcing them to boot Windows.

Remote attestation is absolutely part of the feature set of TPM. That is isn't used is because of the poor adaptation. So I wouldn't say it 'was' as scare. Of course there are different threats too.

Actually it is quite a current topic, because tech companies are interested in this for very obvious reasons that is not referring to your evil maid. Web integrity comes to mind.

No, that was the Secure Boot scare. TPM is unrelated to that particular matter, though it can interact with Secure Boot (as part of Measured Boot).

Both technologies apply to any operating system and provide important software security benefits.

I run Linux fine on systems with TPM 2.0 (with Secure Boot enabled).

As far as I know, TPM can be disabled in the BIOS. Perhaps not on every motherboard, but I have yet to encounter one like that.

You’re thinking of secure boot, tpm is wholly unrelated.

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