Windows 10 to make the Secure Boot alt-OS lock out a reality

Mystere said:

First, that's referring to "after-market", which means the computer did not originally come with the card and you are replacing either onboard video or a different card.

Second, that article is 2 years old, and probably refers to cards that are much older.. every card I've used from the last 3 years has been UEFI compatible. But... if, for some reason, you have a brand new system with Windows 10, you may not be able to upgrade the firmware of a 3 or 4 year old video card. You can always plug it into a different computer and do the firmware update there. Or, you might have to get a new card.. it's not completely unheard of for old hardware to be incompatible with new hardware.

Either way, this is probably a very rare scenario in the future.

I never said the video card that came with the computer, I said upgrading. And I didn't buy my video cards 3 or 4 years ago. Either your only reading what you want and not all the post or your just trying tick me off. Either way I'm done replying to you.

Winuser said:

I never said the video card that came with the computer, I said upgrading. And I didn't buy my video cards 3 or 4 years ago. Either your only reading what you want and not all the post or your just trying tick me off. Either way I'm done replying to you.

Excuse me? I didn't say you said that. *I* said that. I'm sorry, but no.. you're not going to find any new video card that's not UEFI compatible. It's just not going to be the case, unless that card was manufactured 3 or 4 years ago and still sitting on a shelf.

Dated March 2015. FAQ: Windows 8, UEFI and graphics cards (updated) | Advent Computers

@lehnerus2000

Off topic question, where canI get the virtual machine player, I am using xubuntu 14.10 ?

Winuser said:

Dated March 2015. FAQ: Windows 8, UEFI and graphics cards (updated) | Advent Computers

The trouble is that very few graphics cards are UEFI-compliant, as Windows 8 still has a relatively small market share. This may change over time but for now it means that replacement graphics cards might stop your Windows 8 PC working.

This isnt really true nvidia gtx 750 and higher cards are uefi-compliant and amd radeon cards have uefi-compliant since the hd 5000 or 6000 series. In the case of your gt 740 its a rebrand gt 650, nvidia 600 series cards wasnt sold as uefi-compliant but some manufacturers did have uefi-compliant bios available upon request mainly for the high end cards in the 600 series.

Hi there

I think you are all getting away from the point.

No-one is suggesting that Ms can't design an OS in the way it wants to. If it requires secure boot then so be it - it's a big mistake IMO since it effectively locks out Zillions of older computers from running it and it makes recovery / installing /testing alternative OS'es more difficult.

What the complaint is about is that computers will NOT have the option to TURN OFF that feature if the users want it off.
Actually I can't see this whole issue going anywhere

There's nothing wrong with UEFI on new machines -- that's a different issue and doesn't have to have secure boot enabled.

Another worrying feature with secure boot is like all things it could get Hacked by some rogue OS updates. Now at least with an infected HDD you can always wipe it - but I can't see a typical user attempting to flash a BIOS without big problems.

@groze - ensure you download the Linux headers for your running kernel FIRST and distro, ensure also you have GCC (C compiler), MAKE , AUTOMAKE, CONF and AUTO CONF and then simply run the .bundle file you download from VMware. Works perfectly on CENTOS, OPENSUSE and a few other distros I've tried it on.
@lehnerus2000 - The latest version of VMware software uses DYNAMIC RAM for managing VM's so older memory monitors / measurement software will probably yield "dubious" results.

Cheers
jimbo

Hi there

I for one won't be buying any hardware if there is no way of switching OFF protected boot. What about those users who want to run an OS TOTALLY from an EXTERNAL HDD such as say LINUX or WINDOWS to GO. These Os'es can work even if the internal "C" drive is totally broken. The whole idea of these is that they can run on as many machines as you like. If these are restricted via Protected boot then what's the whole point of creating "Portable systems".

I've been very glad to have had a bootable external Linux system which I've been able to use to repair non functioning computers whether or not the protected boot feature was installed or not. I don't want to create loads of separate "Emergency Repair discs" and in any case the whole idea of a User key for Linux is totally against the whole idea of open source and freely useable software.

I've probably got about 10 different Linux distros -- I certainly wouldn't want to maintain a whole slew of User keys in a Bios just to boot up a one off repair system.

Cheers
jimbo