Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Indi <thebeelzebubtrigger@×××××.com>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Should I be worried that I won't be able to dual boot in Gentoo?
Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2011 04:19:04
Message-Id: 20110927041757.GB4903@gaurahari.merseine.nu
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Should I be worried that I won't be able to dual boot in Gentoo? by "Albert W. Hopkins"
1 On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 06:46:21PM -0400, Albert W. Hopkins wrote:
2 > On Mon, 2011-09-26 at 11:15 -0500, Dale wrote:
3 > > So buy a mobo without it or that can disable it. Got it. It'll be a
4 > > good while before I buy a new mobo tho. I'm sure they will have a
5 > > nice
6 > > fix by then but this is something I need to remember just in
7 > > case. ;-)
8 >
9 > Ok, I'll bite...
10 >
11 > It depends on who makes your system. For example, I've got a new
12 > laptop, with UEFI BIOS and SATA HDD, but if you go in the UEFI settings
13 > and change a couple of settings, you'll be able to boot into DOS. Why?
14 > Because, surprisingly, they still have quite a few corporate customers
15 > that need to use DOS. So if you can boot DOS you can boot Linux.
16 >
17 > Some manufacturers still provide firmware and BIOS updates via DOS boot
18 > cds. If you can boot from a non-signed CD, you can boot Linux. Some
19 > manufactures still consider it a competitive advantage to offer
20 > "fast-boot" linux-based firmware. Likely those would be able to be
21 > manipulated in order to to boot Linux from disk.
22 >
23 > On the server side, I don't think there is any major server manufacturer
24 > dumb enough to sell a system not capable of running Linux.
25 >
26 > In short, it's probably less of a problem then than people make it out
27 > to be. It's akin to the old(?) days when Broadcom cards didn't work
28 > with Linux. The solution is always simple: don't buy a system that has
29 > a Broadcom card.
30 >
31
32 It's absolutely not a concern, beyond checking to make sure any
33 "safe boot" feature can be disabled before buying. And even that
34 won't be necessary once it's circumvented -- which it will be.
35 Locking the bootloader only works on (some) phones because of
36 their mayfly-like life expectancy combined with their consumer-
37 oriented purpose. And in spite of that, we have cyanogenmod and
38 other successful alternative OS projects.
39
40 All this latest scheme will do is help create signed malware.
41 And some people say innovation is dying... :)
42
43 --
44 caveat utilitor
45 ♫ ❤ ♫ ❤ ♫ ❤ ♫ ❤