Spanish Open Source Group Files Complaint Over Microsoft Use of UEFI Secure Boot 154
sl4shd0rk writes "Hispalinux, which represents Spanish Open Source developers and users, has filed a complaint against Microsoft with the European Commission. 14 pages of grief cited Windows 8 as an 'obstruction mechanism' calling UEFI Secure Boot a 'de facto technological jail for computer booting systems... making Microsoft's Windows platform less neutral than ever.' On March 6 of 2012 the Commission fined Microsoft 561 million Euros for failing to offer users a choice of web browser, and there was also a 2004 ruling which found the company had abused its market position by tying Windows Media Player to Windows itself. Relations appear to remain more tense towards Windows in Europe, so there may be some hope of making UEFI more Linux-friendly. UEFI has been implicated in the death of Samsung laptops running Linux."
Samsung laptops (Score:5, Informative)
UEFI has been implicated in the death of Samsung laptops running Linux.
That had nothing to do with Linux, and UEFI had no fault in that. The problem is that Samsung wrote a serious bug into their UEFI implementation that causes the laptop to brick if the user does X, Y, and Z under any operating system.
Re:Linux and UEFI (Score:3, Informative)
The troubles that are faced by Linux users (for example, the bricking of Samsung laptops)
That had nothing to do with Linux or SecureBoot. It was a Samsung bug that also affected Windows.
It was just first detected by Linux users.
Re:I hope they make the right decision.... (Score:4, Informative)
That kind of virus protection was present in older BIOS implementations, while win9x/ME was still present. With Win2K/XP, no such protections work (for MBR booting) because other drivers are accessing the HW directly (and you cannot enforce on HW because that would prevent repartitioning).
For UEFI-booting, the UEFI firmware has a complete path to a partition+file. There is no way to protect a single file with a compromised OS.