Indiferent ca folositi Windows sau nu, este imposibil sa nu fi auzit de urmatoarea versiune a sistemului de operare creat de Microsoft, anume Windows 8. Faptul ca se vrea a fi un sistem de operare universal care sa fie instalat pe cat mai multe dispozitive nu este un lucru asa de rau. Partea mai putin buna ar fi inlocuirea BIOS-ului cu UEFI, pentru calculatoarele cu Windows 8 preinstalat. Acest lucru ar pune utilizatorul in risc deoarece nu ar mai putea instala inca un sistem de operare, anume linux, alaturi de Windows 8, realizand ceea ce se numeste dual boot.
Ce este UEFI? The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) is a specification that defines a software interface between an operating system and platform firmware. UEFI is a replacement for the older BIOS firmware interface present in all IBM PC-compatible personal computers. UEFI is not restricted to any specific processor architecture, and can run on top of, or instead of, traditional BIOS implementations.
Conform celor de ITWorld acest lucru ar ajuta Compania Microsoft sa mai opreasca din ascensiuna distributiilor linux, care asa cum bine se stie pot functiona pe diferite configuratii, de la desktop-uri pana la dispozitive mobile. O parere despre acest lucru a fost exprimata de catre Matthew Garrett, un angajat al RedHat: “Microsoft requires that machines conforming to the Windows 8 logo program and running a client version of Windows 8 ship with secure boot enabled. The two alternatives here are for Windows to be signed with a Microsoft key and for the public part of that key to be included with all systems, or alternatively for each OEM to include their own key and sign the pre-installed versions of Windows. The second approach would make it impossible to run boxed copies of Windows on Windows logo hardware, and also impossible to install new versions of Windows unless your OEM provided a new signed copy. The former seems more likely.” De asemenea acelasi angajat subliniaza si eventualele obstacole pe care Grub 2 ar trebui sa le depaseasca pentru a se putea adapta la schimbarile aduse de UEFI: “Firstly, we’d need a non-GPL bootloader. Grub 2 is released under the GPLv3, which explicitly requires that we provide the signing keys. Grub is under GPLv2 which lacks the explicit requirement for keys, but it could be argued that the requirement for the scripts used to control compilation includes that. It’s a grey area, and exploiting it would be a pretty good show of bad faith. Secondly, in the near future the design of the kernel will mean that the kernel itself is part of the bootloader. This means that kernels will also have to be signed. Making it impossible for users or developers to build their own kernels is not practical. Finally, if we self-sign, it’s still necessary to get our keys included by ever OEM.” Articolul complet il puteti citi aici.
Personal nu-mi ramane decat sa ma bucur de calculatorul meu care foloseste numai BIOS si pe viitor cand il voi schimba sa am grija ce cumpar pentru a nu avea prea multe batai de cap. :)
