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posted by martyb on Saturday May 30 2015, @01:52AM   Printer-friendly
from the Embrace-Extend-Extinguish dept.

At its WinHEC hardware conference in Shenzhen, China, Microsoft talked about the hardware requirements for Windows 10. The precise final specs are not available yet, so all this is somewhat subject to change, but right now, Microsoft says that the switch to allow Secure Boot to be turned off is now optional. Hardware can be Designed for Windows 10 and can offer no way to opt out of the Secure Boot lock down.

The presentation is silent on whether OEMs can or should provide support for adding custom certificates.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by goody on Saturday May 30 2015, @03:02AM

    by goody (2135) on Saturday May 30 2015, @03:02AM (#189962)

    I say let them do it. If the major hardware manufacturers are dumb enough to offer only Windows 10 capable hardware, that will make open hardware even more attractive and offer opportunities for new startups to offer it. Perhaps we'll see a Raspberry Pi-like movement arise, offering open desktop and server grade boards.

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 30 2015, @03:24AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 30 2015, @03:24AM (#189972)

    Agreed, having people associate them with crippled hardware would be great for allowing the market to open up. Also just getting them off the playing field is desirable because they keep affecting everything disproportionately while having poor user interface design.

    The web hopefully will put enough pressure on them that they no longer feel secure enough to attempt to make war against other operating systems and get back to work on usability design.

    However I think true democratization of technology will only arrive as we begin to print and later create/share/print our own electronics. The web really opened my eyes that anyone with a good sense of design can handily out-create the product of these corporations (generally by just streamlining the operation and interface). I do not believe that current commercial giants can necessarily compete with the quality that will inevitably arise from having a distributed network of creators constantly refining things.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Saturday May 30 2015, @08:16AM

      by kaszz (4211) on Saturday May 30 2015, @08:16AM (#190024) Journal

      The declining ability of hardware platforms might hurt alternative OS business while the transition from crippled to free motherboards happens. Time is a factor.

      And making a modern motherboard is a really though challenge that will bar most users for simply being to complex and expensive.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Whoever on Saturday May 30 2015, @04:08AM

    by Whoever (4524) on Saturday May 30 2015, @04:08AM (#189983) Journal

    Perhaps we'll see a Raspberry Pi-like movement arise, offering open desktop and server grade boards.

    The one thing that you can be sure of is that manufacturers of server-grade boards are going to make it as easy as possible to install Linux. The market share for Linux servers is far too high for any manufacturer of server-grade hardware.

  • (Score: 2) by meisterister on Saturday May 30 2015, @05:14PM

    by meisterister (949) on Saturday May 30 2015, @05:14PM (#190151) Journal

    Given the number of people who downgraded from Vista to XP and later upgraded from 8 to 7 (Going from Windows 8 to Windows 95 would be an upgrade as well for that matter), it wouldn't surprise me if the hardware manufacturers that force only Windows 10 would face some serious problems.

    Quite frankly, any computer that is unable to start any binary and hardware-compatible operating system is defective. Period. I would gladly RMA any product if it could only boot Windows 10, even if I didn't want to install another OS on it.

    --
    (May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.