Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

AMD Ryzen PRO 6860Z Powered Lenovo Z13 Notebook With Microsoft Pluton Co-Processor Can't Boot Linux

posted by janrinok on Monday July 11 2022, @12:43AM   Printer-friendly
from the ought-to-give-Windows-the-boot dept.

takyon writes:

AMD Ryzen PRO 6860Z powered Lenovo Z13 notebook with Microsoft Pluton co-processor can't boot Linux operating systems

Phoronix reports that AMD powered ThinkPad Z13 laptop featuring Ryzen 6000 PRO Zen3+ series has problem booting Linux operating systems. This has been discovered by Matthew Garrett who shared the news on his website.

This laptop is equipped with Lenovo exclusive AMD Ryzen PRO 6860Z processor with built-in Microsoft Pluton security co-processors. This is a dedicated chip that is supposed to increase security for Windows systems by verifying UEFI certificate keys. The problem is that it only trusts Microsoft's key, not any 3rd party UEFI keys that are used by various Linux distributions.

This essentially means that Lenovo ThinkPad Z13 simply cannot run any Linux system. This laptop ships with Windows 11 by default and while there is no mention of Linux support anywhere, one could also argue that nowhere does it say it cannot boot Linux (and yes we have checked various official specs and press releases).

Original Submission

 
This discussion was created by janrinok (52) for logged-in users only, but now has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
AMD Ryzen PRO 6860Z Powered Lenovo Z13 Notebook With Microsoft Pluton Co-Processor Can't Boot Linux | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 22 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 2) by drussell on Monday July 11 2022, @12:37PM

    by drussell (2678) on Monday July 11 2022, @12:37PM (#1259747) Journal

    Users like you and me may be able to easily enable third party UEFI keys, but I don't want Linux limited to users who are willing to change settings in the BIOS setup. Even though this is only a soft barrier, I believe it is a story.

    Usually you'd have to go in there anyway to enable booting from a USB stick, either to boot a live-distro or to boot your install media if you're doing a permanent installation.

    Most machines today won't boot from anything except the internal hard disk by default out-of-the-box, which I would think is generally a good thing given the amount of rogue crap floating around on USB devices.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  
    Total Score:   2