this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2024
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[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (3 children)

I still for the life of me can’t figure out what’s so great about secure boot and tpm. All it’s ever done for me is prevent me from booting a legitimate OS, or a bootable flash drive with iso images on it (like ventoy). It’s also pretty good at giving me a headache trying to figure out how the keys work and how to register them.

I just turn them both off and live in ignorant bliss.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Secure boot and TPM are tools for (among other things) making sure nobody (E.G. a virus or worm) has tampered with your OS and bootloader. You can for instance use both on Linux, it's just by default they come preloaded with Microsofts configuration for loading Windows, and the technical knowledge for how to reconfigure it is a bit arcane.

It's an excellent security tool, it's just abused by Microsoft to discourage competition.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

Until the next security hole you can't fix with an update.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago

It greatly raises the cost of exploring competing software for the average person.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago (2 children)

It's not for you, it's for them. Secure boot means it only runs their operating system, not yours. Trusted enclave means it secures their DRM-ware from tampering by the user who owns the PC.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Secure boot means that only the intended bootloader runs, it can be any one, but it just needs to be the intended one.

Secure boot works with Linux.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

It works for now on x86-64, yes. For now. As always, we are one "think of the children" crisis away from lobbyists taking that option away.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago (1 children)

What? I think you maybe just don't know what purpose secure boot serves.

It's not a tool to vendor lock computers, it's a tool to establish a chain of trust to protect the boot process by only allowing cryptographically signed images from executing. Anyone can sign things for secure boot by simply creating an x509 certificate and importing it. If vendors wanted to prevent you from running a different operating system, they would just lock it down completely as is done in many devices like mobile phones and proprietary electronics.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

^ this People are very ignorant about what secure boot actually is.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago

What do you mean? I remove all vendor keys and enroll my own secure boot keys. This way only my install with my bootloader signed by my keys will boot.