Windows 10 will make dual booting harder by requiring UEFI Secure Boot
Windows 10 will make dual booting harder by requiring UEFI Secure Boot
Once again, Microsoft is striking fear into the hearts of dual booters by bringing back the the concept of UEFI.
For those who forgot this was a big deal with Windows 8.
Back in the day, in order for hardware manufacturers to get a “Designed for Windows 8″ logo, they had to fulfill a host of requirements.
One of those requirements was the implementation of UEFI Secure Boot.
You see, Secure Boot protects against malware that interferes with the boot process in order to inject itself into the operating system at a low level.
When Secure Boot is enabled, the core components used to boot the machine must have correct cryptographic signatures, and the UEFI firmware verifies this before it lets the machine start.
If any files have been tampered with, breaking their signature, the system won’t boot.
Well with Windows 10, it seems like Microsoft is making this a requirement.
For Windows 10 Desktop, OEM’s will apparently have some discretion about whether they implement this before they release their devices for sale.
It’s mandatory for Windows 10 Mobile.
With Windows 8, it was less of a problem because Microsoftalso mandated that every system must have a user-accessible switch to turn Secure Boot off.
This ensured that for the end consumer, if they so chose, Windows 8 computers would be compatible for dual booting with other alternative Operating Systems like Linux.
Now however, here’s the problem. Microsoft is saying that the switch to allow Secure Boot to be turned off is now optional for OEM’s to implement.
Technically this means that computers can be Designed for Windows 10 and sold that offer absolutely no way to opt out of the Secure Boot lock down.
What does that mean for you as a consumer?
It would mean that you could buy a Windows 10 desktop or laptop and then several weeks or months later, if you decided you wanted to dual boot with Linux, find out that you couldn’t.
For some in the tech community, that is absolutely unacceptable.
Let’s see what Microsoft ends up doing and see if we can avoid this mess.
Stay tuned…
malikmuddser