How long do we have before PCs get locked bootloaders and corporations ban installation of "non-approved" software? (for context: Google is restricting sideloading worldwide on Android ETA 2027)
Now? Doesn’t M$ still release the "S" mode version of Windows that only allow downloads via their "official App Store"?
My girlfriends laptop came with S mode and holy shit, I just about threw it out the window. I knew Windows 11 would be dogshit but when I couldn't run firefoxinstaller.exe I got so annoyed. I then spent ~30 minutes troubleshooting how to allow running fucking exes as the guides were all out of date, including the one that were a month old.
I've been using Linux and XP for a few years now and god damn does it feel gross to use Win11. Not having control over your own PC is disgusting.
Windows machines make great Linux devices. Hope your gf likes her new Ubuntu laptop :)
You can convert to the home edition for free (for now at least)
Also you can disable secure boot and just install linux.
Mmmm, Linux
With Linux being the standard for server systems there is no way to force locked bootloaders everywhere without making the whole web and a lot of companies collapse. But I expect more limitations regarding desktop systems. It's hard to tell at this point because it's a complex issue, not only from an economical but also political point of view (Mass surveillance).
Don't I own this hardware? Can I not do what I want with it?
No, because fuck you. Ownership is for pussies, do you really want to own what you buy? Just buy a new one if you have problems. my hope is that we eventually get to a point where you cant even build your own PC. Gaming PCs all built by Nvidia woth the latest Geforce built in to the motherboard. With a subscription fee to use it, im talking cheap like only $20/month. and then in a year it can sleep gently in a landfill. Oh and a feature that sets your house on fire and mangles your genitals. and if you try to turn that off, you get sued. it was in the TOS, just dont use a computer if that bothers you, shithead. the future is bright.
You own the hardware but not the software.
Without software access it is useless until you are able to jailbreak it.
Which is technically a breach of contract at the very least and could be deemed IP theft by a brain dead USian judge.
So you can't even commercialize your solution because capitalism works 1 way.
Case in point:
Find a recently-ish manufactured used Chromebook/chromebox, and try to unlock the BIOS so you can slap a different OS on it
Source: it me 🫠
You’ll shoot your eye out, kid.
/s
Beep-boop!
Companion (2025)
It's called secure boot and it's been around for over 10 years now.
And the first iteration was much more locked down, only got changed after public complaints.
This isn't quite the same thing. I'd say locked bootloaders are the Android analog, and they are already less likely to be user unlockable than the typical PC (and the situation is getting worse).
Microsoft is already starting to lay the groundwork with their CPU, SecureBoot, and TPM 2.0 requirements.
Apple has been doing this for a long time, though there are ways to get around it on MacOS, for now.
On PC, the answer is Linux. For mobile devices, things are looking more bleak.
Linux won't be an option if the boot loader is locked. I think Linux is just about popular enough that options should remain but they might become reduced unless it becomes more popular than it currently is.
I'd imagine not every mobo manufacturer will play ball with whoever mandates a locked bootloader.
Right now, we have google and apple with a duopoly on mobile devices.
Linux is heavily used on servers. Losing server sector means a huge chunk of revenue.
If the private key were to leak, we'd be home free
The situation is actually quite awful. I remember when TPM was palladium and there were apocalyptic talks in tech conferences about it being the end of general purpose computers. The idea that your computer could veto what it was used for.
The backlash only set them back a few decades apparently. Everyone forgot and now it's a literal requirement for the latest Windows and in two months they'll stop supporting the old Windows..
Next phone I get I'll get fairphone and check the market for an alternative OS at that time. This might be the push that the Linux phone community needs to make it proper and good.
We currently need a KDE phone that they sell where I can buy a KDE phone and support them that way.
The pieces are coming together for Linux notably:
I'm getting pretty sick of Google and other corpos locking down Android so fuck them, third best phone OS will have to do and I'll do banking in the mobile browser page.
I just bought the cheapest fairphone I could get to replace my old pixel. Now it's time to try proper linux on mobile for the first time. I'm excited!
Almost 15 years on Android finally coming to an end! My first Android phone came with Android 2.1 and now 14 shall be the last version I'll ever use.
This is what happened when we allowed companies with a profit incentive to code our devices. Linux will always be free, and there will be companies that design computers for Linux, such as Fairphone, Framework, Furi, Fedora, and probably some that don't start with F too
How does Fairphone design computers for Linux?
The Fairphone is one of the beat supported Linux Mobile devices
By far most of work on Linux is being done by for profit companies
It's been tried a bit before, but didn't get through. The current situation with secure boot is worrying, because we're one manufacturer playing ball away from it to become a reality.
I'd like to say there's strong incentive to not do that, but it seems that logic alone would not stop this kind of push. And weirdly enough, even financial risk might not be enough, as we've seen baffling decisions made these last few months.
The main saving graces is that there are more than two manufacturer for motherboard, and as far as I know, patent lockdown and secrecy isn't as big on PC hardware than on mobile boards, so it might be easier to escape such lockdown. But fully locked down systems under external control is clearly where some people wants us to go.
Users are getting dumber by the day. The people arguing back to me about "this is a you problem" when I mention reasons why device ownership is important is way too fucking high.
This is why you gatekeep hobbies. Keep the dipshits out so they don't become the masses that ruin what you enjoy.
Exactly, if I like something I try to keep it on the down low, or only spread it in circles where I know it will be similarly appreciated, the moment a majority of the people are into something, that thing will now get subjected to external influences that require it to be liked by everyone and most people are mediocre so the thing moves towards mediocrity
It's been done before. ChromeBooks comes to mind, but there have been others. Usually winds up killing the outfit that tries it.
As far as I know Chromebooks only survive because of the educational market. Locked down devices are preferable in schools.
I won't buy one, but I could see such systems becoming dominant in another 20 years or so.
It will creep in slowly since most people dont touch any settings on their computer after the initial unboxing and setup.
Big box retailers will offer discounts on them, much like how you can buy a Chromebook for very little.
Enticed by cheap computers, people will buy not knowing that any limitations exist. They'll be encouraged to use centralized app repositories but they can still install some other stuff.
A year or two later, some things won't be permitted, computer will make scary warnings when installing, but with enough clicking, you can get past. Until the day you can't.
It will be a progression, but it will happen eventually. I honestly am surprised that computers dont require some sort of registration. I'm sure that will happen eventually.
I wonder if PCs are getting fast enough to do everything that the opposite can happen. Older hardware and free software is as good or better than proprietary with new software. So, even with subsidy, they can't turn the screw. The problem with mobile is the lack of a competitor, and the duopoly.
Even Microsoft could not break it. If Linux mobile can port over all android apps seamlessly or easily for devs, with lower fees, then it has a chance. Microsoft paid devs to put their apps on the windows mobile store but even that wasn't enough.
Similar to windows, the more they turn the screws, the more people want to leave. There is a boiled frog effect but eventually lots of the frogs die in that analogy, turning off the cash spigot.
Isn't the serial number already on the box? So its already scanned into a database then you checkout? I know for phones at least, they definitely scan the barcode with the imei at checkout
Too late to do this for PCs. You already have Linux laptop providers and Linux distros supported by corporations. Most of the components have multiple providers. You will be able to source "unlocked" hardware from somewhere.
The problem with mobile is that the hardware is too complicated for open source projects to handle. Many have tried, all have failed. So far. Hopefully we will finally see something usable come out of projects like PinePhone and PostmarketOS.
all have failed
Here I sit, an eternal failure.
To be honest, I don't have any hope. I just keep running. When I run out of places to hide, maybe I'll give computers up and get into philosophy or something. If only 1M signatures carried the weight of $1M, we might stand a chance.
Where from here? Keep finding obscure ways to use computers freely, different chipsets, virtualization, remote access, whatever it takes. Fuck Microsoft, Google and Apple.
$1M carries the weight of about 1M signatures, which is to say... not much.
What makes mobile hardware more complicated than desktop hardware?
It's a long history lesson. But the gist is that IBM made an architecture that allowed for modular LEGO style construction of computers. They were assholes and tried to make it lock down by keeping software secret and proprietary, but it was so popular that everyone else copied it and IBM/PC clones were born. Then the architecture became the standard, and everyone could make components for a PC with (more or less) assurance that any component made would be compatible and fit into (almost) any other computer.
Phones, on the other hand were born out of the necessity of being the smallest and most portable device possible. This meant bespoke solutions. The people who were chasing that format chose an architecture, ARM, that at the time required everything to be on a single chip. Memory, storage, CPU, CMOS, everything has to be on the chip. Which means exchanging parts is not possible. System on chip became the smart phone standard. Now, technically ARM doesn't have to always be SOC. But it means two things, first is that every phone model is an unique and bespoke production that will never exist again once out of print. Second, it is a Titanic task to reverse engineer certain parts of it, firmware for sensor input is always unique, for example.
This means that FOSS is at a disadvantage. To make free open software for a phone means that, either a manufacturer is magnanimous and gives you all the firmware, or after a major effort to reverse engineer lots of pieces of software, it will be useless for the next model of phone. You either make your own open standard phone, which is a several billion dollar r&d endeavor. Or you're constantly shooting at a fast moving target.
No one has created an open standard that allows small component manufacturing of mutually interchangeable parts for phones. Risc-v is close but not yet terribly financially viable.
It's not any one platform that is too complicated, it's that none of it was standardized. So once you have support for one phone completely done, the next model is already released 6 months ago and you have to start almost from scratch again.
Pixel was one exception to this, because Google would release and document all the modifications needed to run Android. Unfortunately they stopped doing this as well.
Contrast this to the x86 PC and laptop market and everything basic, like how to discover hardware, how to boot is all a documented standard. Even though on PC, you still have to deal with drivers for specific hardware.
Another reason why PC is much easier for Linux is that much of the hardware is shared with servers and for servers, Linux is absolutely a first class operating system, which all but some extremely niche hardware manufacturers fully support.
You need way, way better sleep handling. To get decent battery life everything needs to be able to go to sleep really fast but also be able to listen for signals from specific devices like GSM modem and wake up immediately. Without it it's not really usable. Desktop PCs didn't have any sleep functionality for a very long time and even now they mostly just disable everything and wait for a button press. Sleep/wake-up cycle can last couple of seconds without issues.
Mobile hardware also has more devices. I don't have GPS, GSM, accelerometer or finger print reader in my laptop. When Linux was developed they also didn't have cameras or bluetooth. A lot of this additional devices are not easily available like PC parts and require closed source drivers and firmware.
To make a usable mobile phone you need to figure out all if it at once. You can't really release a phone without GPS or GSM and expect people to use it as a daily driver. With PC you can live without the camera or build in WiFi. I remember using USB dongles for WiFi and simply not having a working camera in my Linux laptops and I was fine with it.
Fairphone devs contribute drives to linux. Their phones are among the best supported devices for postmarketos and ubuntu touch and so on.
Has Fairphone failed in this regard, in your opinion?
What are these Linux laptop providers going to sell if they can't order anything from the factory that lets them change the software because reasons
Just updated my pinephone the other day. It's not spectacular in terms of usability. It does the bare minimum at the bare minimum.
I'm saying that there's enough laptop providers and enough different factories to maintain supply of unlocked hardware. You don't have to worry about locked CPU/GPUs, only about locked bootloaders which have a lot of different providers. With mobiles it's easier to lock because it's all packed into SOCs and you don't have as much choice for latest hardware.
Too late to do this for PCs.
let me tell you about this little thing called windows 11.
I know for a fact that this is exactly where compute is going, just look at the aggressive moves that MS has been making over the last 15-25 years.
it starts with requiring an always on connection, and ends with hardware lockout like Mac has.
sure Linux will be an option... but for how much longer? all the old devs are retiring and the new ones....god help us. they want to rewrite it like any greenhorn, and they want to use...rust??!
I give it 10-15 years before hardware locks out Linux, and Linux is dying.
I'm a Linux user btw, so don't think I'm a MS or Mac fan.
Linux is dying
I definitely am not getting this impression, especially with the recent boost in popularity, but this isn't my field of expertise. Any reading you can recommend to get an old man up to speed?
Most of servers run Linux, and servers are just computers.
Just to add on top of that I think Linux will be good as long as Torvalds is alive. After that who knows what would happen. They might add binaries to mainstream kernel that lock you out and who can stop them ? We are lucky we live in times where we have a choice.
I would say if/when PCs move over to ARM than we very well may see the same issues mobile devices have. There is a severe lack of Linux compatibility due to proprietary drivers, sometimes no drivers at all, no software support, and no device trees.
there is another... but, it may be RISCy
As much as I love RISC-V I'm afraid it will turn just like arm now, the architecture is open but every chipset that came out is not, there isn't an unified booting standard like UEFI+ACPI for RISC-V
God I hope i'm wrong
Also ARM is way less standard. While UEFI does exist on ARM, most just use some custom bootloader. And let's not forget how ARM is protecting its Mali Linux drivers.
I have the ubuntu 25 concept installed on my snapdragon HP Omnibook 14
Other than a few software hiccups you would expect of a "concept build" it works almost perfectly and is now my daily driver. Actually getting the OS on the machine was pretty easy too, it has something akin to a bios. the process isn't all that different.
The more difficult bit was getting the drivers working after installing the OS. no all of them have been released under license yet so some of them you have to poach from the windows partition. also audio required some tweaking.
Well yes many arm PCs do work, im just saying eventually they will be locked down
It's not going to happen.
Motherboard manufacturers are not going to start making Windows only BIOS.
Microsofts target audience isn't the private user. It's companies. The money they make selling their OS to private persons are table scraps compared to their enterprise licenses. Any such initiative would fuck over every single enterprise customer.
It's been attempted in two ways.
First is secure boot. There were a handful of computers sold that did not allow disabling of secure boot, or changing the loaded keys. So it was basically essentially a Windows only computer.
More recently is there was Microsoft Windows S. This was a cheap version of Windows Home that ran on low end computers and was locked to only allow installing apps from the Microsoft store. It was possible to unlock it but as I recall it required an additional fee.
Enterprises almost all run Windows anyway so they DGAF.
Enterprises use a lot, and I do mean A LOT of custom software. Either developed in house or by others. They absolutely care.
What Microsoft does within their own OS, as the "S" version you're talking about. That's a non issue given you can just flash the drive and install whatever OS you want.
As for the concern that you'd somehow be unable to install another OS. Due to Secure Boot. I personally have never come across a computer that I've had full BIOS access to that didn't allow disabling secure boot. Though some have been more cooperative than others. But maybe I'm just lucky.
But I'm also pretty sure there are linux distributions that support Secure Boot.
Secure Boot for what it's intended to do, is a pretty good feature. Which is to stop unauthorized software from running before initiating your OS
Fedora supports secure boot out of the box
Isn't secure boot signed by Microsoft anyway IIRC? I know Lenovo had their own signing too. From my knowledge, installing a secure-boot supported linux version requires a 'shim' to allow it, and there was an issue that came up as the keys are due to expire for older OS versions.
Of course, Secure Boot can be switched off as well. (for now)
We already have that. A reason they want to shift to ARM is so they can lock the hardware down.
That's probably why risc-v is getting quite popular in embedded stuff - smaller companies wanting more supply chain independence. Hopefully it'll start to get more powerful soon for more serious computing. Its nice that stuff like debian now has risk-v version too.
Nahhhhhh that's far more interesting in cause. Moore's law has been dead for like... I dunno', at least a decade by now? Bigger and bigger instruction sets have similarly hit their max return on investment. RISC-V is making a comeback solely because it's literally competative now that frequency and even fancy inctructions have long since tapped out for performance gains.
Especially with GPU compute becoming more and more of a thing since DX11+. Parallel computation has become more and more of a well understood task with great ROI while increasing single threaded performance has been a wizard's game for yeeeaaaaars.
It's gotten to the point where some companies are aiming to produce competative RISC-V desktops and servers.
And just like that I’m all about Ubuntu phones now
Which devices are you planning to get at right now?
Either buy pine or try out userland for current but I haven’t completed the research yet
This is a very American mindset
Not the consumers so much as a ton of businesses that would have their whole IT broken.
Microsoft has really really wanted this to happen, but their attempts have failed to get traction, because it breaks just so many applications. The only reason people use windows is compatibility with all their apps, a move that breaks all the apps just doesn't work.
Different with Android and iPhone where they managed to define the default position as app store and didn't have to contend with "legacy".
We already have "secure boot" BS. For now it's easy to turn off but it's only a matter of time before getting locked and forced everywhere.
And wasn't there already some kind of security certificate issue with secure boot? It is like always, in the name of security and safety the free software/hardware gets locked away and ends up being less secure afterwards.
Linux on the phone has come a long way I hear. I have been meaning to buy one and see if it can be my daily driver. Google being shitty would definitely push me there
I even liked the idea I saw mentioned today where maybe it's time for 2 devices.
One that just does phone calls and SMS.
The other is a tiny portable Linux computer that does everything else. Who needs android or apps anyway?
That seems inconvenient. Can Linux phones not do calls and SMS?
You can get a retro phone for like £15 or so. Mine even has a (shit) camera and a 64GB SD card to expand the internal 32MB (yes MB) storage.
I'm starting to think I don't want calls and SMS on a device. I use signal for that anyways. I'd be fine without and a corpo world burner phone for that
There's also Europe, which has led the way in regulating against monopolistic power for Big Tech.
Yeah, i'm pretty sure the EU wont approve of locking down PCs that way. I'm also pretty sure that Googles current moves regarding the registration of developers and locking down sideloading will not be seen positively in the current climate, where the EU seeks to become more independent from Silicon Valley. The EU has been adamant in their view that users should not be limited to one market on phones; i believe that trying to lock down PCs would lead to legislation forbidding that.
Expect specialist "open" hardware capable of installing any software/OS to become increasingly expensive, while increasingly locked-down, mass-produced consumer hardware remains at current price. You only need to look at TVs for an example of this - try finding a recent non-smart TV at a reasonable price as the cheap models are all subsidised by the revenue from pushing ads into your face.
IIRC, I had a PC (since sold) that had secure boot permanently enabled from the factory. That is, in spirit, a PC with a "locked bootloader", but you might not even notice because many Linux distros have that Microsoft-blessed Linux loading shim... but it is still Microsoft inserting themselves between you and your hardware; they could decide in the next few years they no longer "support" Linux, hypothetically.
Such pcs already exist and are used by buinesses and schools all over... Mostly chromebooks and i suppose apple also fits that criteria.
But it would be very hard to stop a determined hacker who has physical access to a device and doesnt mind voiding any warranties or user agreements.
Most Chromebooks can have other operating systems. Many have a bypass, mine needed to have the battery disconnected from the motherboard while installing the os, then you could connect it back and be done.
yes most chromebooks if you own them you do what you want because google knows even if they did lock them down more someone out there would be waiting with a soldering iron to figure out how to mod them into running other things. But thats not the same thing as a company that buys devices for their employees and doesnt give said employees permission to open them (without risking their job anyway). The point being, the "demand" for such systems is already mostly met, normal PC users/ gamers wouldnt actually buy a product like that, because if they did it would just be a "Console". You couldnt force it on users because there isn't a monopoly of PCs like there is with phones or game consoles
Actually I should have said in my original post, Game Consoles also qualify, because the PS4/5 Xbox whatever, the last 2 generations they're literally just locked down PCs with very specific hardware.
This is already happening, but it's on an organisational level by policy. These policies can be applied to systems that follow trusted computing rules, which is most Windows 10 systems and pretty much all windows 11 systems. Google has laid the groundwork for this since the pixel 3 was released in 2018.
Since then, we have seen Google put the Titan security module in all phones and I'm certain Chromebooks are requiring TPM modules that serve the same function.
Apple has been doing the same since God knows when. Their systems have had unique chips that ensure that when MacOS is installed, it is only installed in Apple computers. There are ways around this, just as there are ways around the TPM requirement for Windows 11.
The trusted computing model, when fully imposed, can basically stop any applications from running that have not been given the blessing of the security team.
As far as I'm aware, the only people taking advantage of the technology are government institutions.
The fact that this can be wielded to enforce control over private individuals by our corporate masters is becoming a very real possibility, but the fact that it hasn't happened yet, by any vendor, is, in my opinion, good evidence to say that it's unlikely, but not impossible. Maybe that's wishful thinking on my part.
In any case, the only truly free operating system left is GNU/Linux, with few other exceptions.
They're waiting until all the products in the wild can be locked down.
Right now, they're struggling to get people.to jump to Windows 11, and people are hoarding their old computers. They want all the products that don't have TPM or its equivalent to be outmoded before they remove the mask.
Maybe. In my experience business isn't that patient.
A TPM is otherwise a good thing. It can extend cryptographic capabilities and the overall security stance of the system.
But I digress. I will reserve judgement for now. Time will tell either way, and I don't think anyone will feel like gloating if they start to lock it down like you believe they will.
Gnu Hurd ftw ! (I'll see myself out)
It'll just be another day for apple users.
For phones Google gets to decide, as an os maker. For PCs, there are multiple OSses so hardware manufacturers get to decide.
I personally don't see AMD or Intel doing that anytime soon, and if they do, at least Arm and Risc-V are making some good progress in the desktop space
Microsoft tried to get things going that way with "s", but it didn't take
I bought my wife a cheap Lenovo laptop when she needed something that supported the "Lockdown" browser (no Linux support). Didn't realize when I bought it what "S" meant (and I've been an IT guy for over 20 years). Got it home and realized what was up, it couldn't even run that browser because it had to be the preconfigured browser from her school and not one from the MS store. An evening of fiddling and a $3 grey market key and she was back onto a normal Windows install.
On the plus side the laptop was only like $299 or $399 and really isn't too bad on the hardware side.
It's almost already like this. In my country every single bank reinvented the wheel by creating a single purpose app which does what aegis does (otp generation from a seed) but with some bits changed (one for example "encrypted" the seed with ROT13) and with draconian measures like bootloader must be locked, adb must be disabled, and are using literal exploits to see if you have "forbidden" directories on /sdcard like/sdcard/magisk even if no file access is granted
Please expand
in order to login on the bank webapp, a token must be generated on a dedicated smartphone with all the google spyware installed, and the app that generates the token refuses to run if the bootloader is unlocked, or if the device is not "certified" by google
I kind of expect this to happen with Apple's rumored $600 macbook. Since they just updated ipadOS to run like a locked down version of macOS. I bet they will offer this cheap mac with the same locked down OS since it will have a "phone" processor in it.
They will say this was a compromise needed, but the majority of people will not care. After a few years, the macs that are open will get more and more expensive.
I'm guessing Windows will slowly start to move in thie direction, but I think they will try to push their remote computers thing to accomplish this.
I'm not sure about bootloaders being locked, I am guessing there will always be something that is unlocked and able to run linux though. It is needed for servers and stuff like that. In the worst case, someone will likely sell arm or risc-v powered boards that can be used to run linux.
I have a feeling, that Windows 12 PCs will be just glorified smartphones with voice control as the default.
Good thing I transitioned to Linux mint (my first distro!) And I will never return to windows. I have some mild challenges in getting some games and programs to work. But I overcame some and I will overcome the others. I also welcome the challenges.
Bold of you to assume that they'll let you to install Linux on your PC...
Congrats. I love the green color. This is exactly the route I plan to do. I'm almost thinking about just uninstalling Win10 and switching to Mint right now.
I refused to play any games that relies on kernel level binaries like FortNight and League.
Never
It isn't gonna happen
The enshittification would be too much, and people would gravitate twoards the more usable tech.
People liked Apple and Google because they offered simplified UX that still let people access what they wanted, as soon as people feel too restricted they will stop using the tech.
This trend is independent and unimpeded by the legality of the tech.
It will happen when the major companies produce some kind of magical formula that literally everyone wants and are willing to sacrifice freedoms just to have it.
THIS is the reason they are chasing AI so hard and trying to make it to AGI before anyone is ready or prepared. They want everyone to have their magical fairy whispering product placements in their ear and charming them into simulated relationships so that the users abandon all thought of having personal control and freedom to train the things themselves, to install their own upgrades, etc.
The next major "thing" we all carry is going to be some kind of AI that can see through your view of the environment and can whisper to you privately various simulated thoughts, observations and relevant info about the things around you. As well of course as "Hey look, Kohl's is having a 35% off sale on jackets, didn't you need one?"
This is their dream, this is why they have put so much into the tech. People are going to gobble it up if they can ever get there, and with that goes all semblance of autonomy, freedom or independant thought.
Call me when they start bringing in legitimacy between understanding how the brain actually functions and relate it to how computation systems actually work.
The current models STRUGGLE with basic speech comprehension that humans are able to nail with significantly higher precision (Just look at LLMs that struggle with dialects between large regions like the US). Use a slang word in a modern search, or use a common definition vs the literal, AI stumbles and fails frequently. Having worked on models as someone whose job was in AI, the algorithms STRUGGLE even understanding basic concepts such as 'Yes' and 'Yeah' being interchangeable without dedicated training. There is a reason that it used to be countless humans sitting in a room teaching a machine how to do something with basic boolean values.
Current Automated Intelligence (I refuse to call it Narrow AI as it diminishes the term AI) will simply be the way of things for a long time until these companies can build trust in them and are able to actually roll out reliable items that: 1) Dont make up data. 2) Can verify data on its own. 3) Can actually understand and infer things based on when people type/say something.
True AI or what they are calling AGI nowadays is a pipe dream similar to what 3D/Augmented Reality/Holographic concepts are. There will be spikes of innovation followed by periods of stagnation. The only difference is that right now current AI models are useful in the corporate world which will lead to shorter periods of stagnation comparably.
Didn't MS already try this with Windows S editions?
Fortunately, Microsoft is too incompetent to pull this off on Windows.
They tried. See the metro app push in Windows 8+. But it’s kind of incredible how much they bungled it; even now, it would be totally dysfunctional with Win32 apps locked down.
And if Windows doesn’t do it, hardware makers aren’t really interested in that sort of thing.
Stuff like SteamOS does worry me a tiny bit. It’s obviously fine now, but I can see a future where, say, Valve (or any hardware seller with some kind of successful storefront) starts to not like rising competition on their own stuff.
I mean we already have that with Nintendo, Xbox and PlayStation
And these devices are controlled both hardware and software by an oem.
PC's are hardware and software agnostic. Some OEM's have done weird stuff with the hardware and bios/uefi to prevent users from upgrading and don't some things but as long as you can buy a motherboard, gpu, ram, and other parts is going to be tough to convince three manufacturers to prevent an end user from using it how they see fit.
SteamOS
SteamDeck doesn't even have secure boot in the BIOS lol
Microsoft is incompetent, and Valve is concerning? Lol
Android is opensource. ROM developers like lineageos should be able to create nornal ROMs with sideload enabled
This is only relevant as long as someone is selling hardware with an unlockable bootloader. The scenario where that isn't the case in a few years is unfortunately realistic.
New releases of android aren't open source and available to the public, the source code is released much later now. You need to be an OEM to get access. This is a real problem faced by developers like Lineage and Graphene
That's a misconception
https://www.ctol.digital/news/android-open-source-google-development-lockdown/
...And have them able to run on zero consumer devices if the bootloaders are locked, and the manufacturers refuse to sign their ROMs for them. (Hint: they will refuse to sign their ROMs for them.)
Bank software is the issue.
They'd have to completely kill the ability to build your own machine (the whole "IBM compatability" thing) and I don't see that happening when almost every business and factory uses their own custom shit for specific niche reasons.
Not really. The pieces are already in place with UEFI and Secure Boot. All that would need to happen would be to force Secure Boot to be enabled, and only preload keys for an approved list of operating systems. With that, your fancy new motherboard may not be able to boot and run the OS of your choice.
Then all the software nerds become hardware nerds, and the cycle continues.
Just use Linux?
I don't understand the question...
It is entirely possible to lock down computer parts to only run Windows and signed drivers. However, the sheer amount of available computer parts, open sourced hardware, widely understood technologies, and not enough monopoly makes this unfeasible for anyone to really try to implement (yet).
If Intel started doing Windows only, they would lose so much revenue from big corporations and data centers it would ruin them, and everyone would just buy AMD instead. Consumer market in computer sector is secondary.
For phones, you really do not have enough alternatives. You choose between evil and more evil. Think of it as Linux in it's starting days - missing features that makes it unusable for the common folk. Linux phones haven't matured yet, that's why you have to choose between feature rich vs heavily degraded user experience, as opposed to minor inconvenience of not being able to run some apps.
Absolutely not, that would never happen. Why? Because there's a load of stuff that runs on Windows that is ancient and only exists as legacy software and never receives updates.
If anything, Windows is the last operating system that will have locked bootloaders, because if they do, there's gonna be some bank somewhere in the world suing them because their ancient counting software was originally made for Windows 3.0 back in the day and Microsoft has had to build their entire operating system around making sure that software continues to run.
They might have hardware requirements like the TPM chip, but they're never going to make it so you can only install software approved by them, because they've got over 40 years of software they'd need to approve before they can do that, and they won't.
Not to mention there will always be methods for and hackers jailbreaking devices. Even Windows 11's TPM requirements have been defeated, anything else will be too.
Microsoft are smart enough to not piss off every giant corporation and destroy their entire business overnight, so you can count on it never being forced by them.
They certainly wouldn't roll it out overnight but they've had their long term targets on OS as a service since Windows 8 and these things tend to come bundled.
Last time I used windows in a big corpo settings, there were so many things pudding off both us Devs but also IT.
Switch out a bad RAM stick? Spend an hour with IT.
Use a software? Spend an hour (or days) with IT
Compile your own software? Believe it or not, spend large amounts of time with IT
Like the compiler on a windows PC can't work without different windows protection systems gets in the way, repeatedly. And then your executable, or some .d'll just get wiped off the disk 😐🤷🏼♀️
I don't think they do it intentionally, but big corpos don't give a shit about their workers conditions, so if they were to enforce things (with backdoors ofc, so that if needed you can deactivate things, remember the unique installation code for windows like 95 or 98?) the grunts will just have to eat it up. And they would probably not have a much harder time, everything is already locked down hardware wise so they are used to all that jazz.
This kind of stuff never happens overnight. It happens slowly, incrementally, and the people are never mad enough at too much sudden change to be motivated enough to do anything. People should feel good about the imposition of boundaries, and it helps that for the average user, the boundaries often result in a better user experience.
pissing off customers never stopped them for decades different versions of office programs ran side by side with no issues. they auto uninstall other versions of office automatically while stopping the install with a big pop up about compatibility issues.
this impacts all businesses using old versions of access programs alongside more new versions of office with newer installers. along with a byzantine licensing model with bizarre "incompatibilities" between the same year versions in different licensing channels, yeah tell me how microsoft won't piss off corpo and government clients.
they seem to specialize in pissing off corpo and gov clients.
Sounds like the businesses you're talking about have incompetent IT staff.
That is already a thing in ARM laptops
And Android phones will get a workaround to fuck over Google, the genie is out of the bottle. This shit will never happen to "all PCs"
The workaround has been around for as long as Android has been around: use AOSP and don't use gapps
Nah, PCs are easier to install anything we want. Corps trying to lock out Linux would be like shooting themselves in the foot.
Phones are what they would like to get a tighter leash on, because it has become a device that nearly everyone buys more than PCs due to them being more usable and cheaper, and thus a bigger revenue channel.
I mean they could always use VMs or docker vs locking the actual base level OS
Yeah, but that's not for everyone else, unfortunately.
You're describing Secure Boot. It happened years ago.
And, btw, the Android thing also doesn't affect anyone without gapps. Chill out.
And, btw, the Android thing also doesn't affect anyone without gapps. Chill out.
so only 99% are affected, that really calms me down.
Many services that are connected to finance/payment require gapps, car sharing, banking etc.
you are right about secure boot, but this was rolled out with proper alternative routes from the beginning. i did not see anything like this for Android at this time
When I was tasked with buying laptops for a company, I made sure to test Linux compatibility on every machine. If the model didn't support Linux, we didn't buy it.
Most of the devs were windows users, but there were enough devs and sysadmins that preferred Linux that it just made more sense to only buy hardware that supports both windows and Linux. I'm sure a lot of tech companies have a similar policy (it's one reason think pads are so ubiquitous)
Corporate pressure would never allow such lockdown in the market
There is no requirement for it, and can be disabled
Exactly.
For now.
You’re describing Secure Boot.
Secure Boot is literally configurable. You can create your own key and sign whatever you want with it. See sbctl.
Yes and no. Most firmware this is impossible.
Linux is quite well established now on home pc's and servers to the dismay of Microsoft and Apple. I hated Secureboot , built into UEFI, during startup by verifying the digital signatures of firmware, drivers, and the OS bootloader. Reading into Deep State Mass surveillance helps:
https://www.printernational.co.uk/timmann/history.htm#surveillance
Nothing says that Linux could eventually evolve into the same thing or fail to ever really function for the masses.
https://youtu.be/HUEvRyemKSg might be relevant.
Turns out some people can predict the future if they pay attention
I see Apple doing it, not because they are Apple but because they control the whole manufacturing process, so they wouldn’t need to negotiate with third parties. That’s what has happened in the mobile industry. In the PC side of things you would need to sit on a table: the CPU, OS, and probably GPU and MOBO manufacturers to negotiate, and knowing how greedy they all are, I don’t see it happening anytime soon. But hey, anything is possible in this dystopian society we live in.
Eh, just means it isn't plug and play. Once you have the hardware, you are the admin.
It may get tougher, but it'll never be impossible.
Tell that to the Intel management engine or secure platform module
Hi intel management system, you can be thrown into abnormal states where you sit there eating glue.
I imagine this will actually create competition. Android is open source. It can be forked.
Also there will always be things like raspberry pi and arduino.
Android is barely open source, and AOSP can no longer directly run on any hardware, not even the pixel. It's not really forkable and maintainable in any ongoing sense.
You need to be an OEM to get access to the latest android source code now.
The question is, who wants to fork and maintain android? That's a massive undertaking, one that wouldn't seem worth it until it started getting meaningful percentages of market share.
I have just one year before I pay off my phone and I want to get a degoogled phone. I wanted my current phone degoogled... but due to the breakage of my previous phone it was a bit of an emergency and I didn't have time to do proper research.
Honestly just get a fairphone. They are repairable, the work well with custom roms and their devs even contribute drivers straight to the linux kernel so the support for proper linux on those phones is great too. You won't find more freedom than that on a phone.
17 and a half weeks
nah. 28 likely. I mean later.
!Remindme 4 January 2026
Wasn't amd pluton or something going to do that?
I just bought a new and CPU and Chinese motherboard and I could still install Ubuntu without problems
I would say this is one of the things EU is doing quite a good job.
It would be difficult making Linux de facto illegal in EU. It could happen but most likely it won't.
I'm honestly kinda sick of this. Sure, Google's decision to try to lock down their devices to prevent installing unsigned apps is concerning for FOSS. But can we all just calm down a bit?
Linux isn't going anywhere, and neither is hardware that supports it. Yes, is possible that Microsoft or even Intel (now that Trump has bought into it) might try to do some sketchy shit. But the open hardware market is starting to look promising. Look at MNT, System76, Pine, Framework etc..
I agree times are scary and everything is looking kinda bleak, but your best option right now is to completely boycot (as much as possible) Google, Apple, Meta, Microsoft etc. Just stop using their shit.
Buy up old PC's, turn them into home servers and self host as many services as you can.
I'm confident GrapheneOS will continue and we will still have f-droid after 2027. But I'm an optimist.
Graphene? Meaning the OS where you have to have a specific range of devices that aren't even very good for the sort of people who'd want an OS like that? I'd most likely be on Graphene already if it wasn't for that annoying as hell limitation.
Just sub what they said with "Graphene, Calyx, iode, etc" and its true
Google is not restricting Sideloading.
Its the same way Apple is doing it. You just need to buy a Signaturen from them via ID, and you have to sign every app.
They are not restricting it, they are just adding these restrictions to doing it
They'll have the power to revoke the ability to install any app for any reason. On top of the chilling affect on developing foss apps.
And what will happen to apps that Google doesn't like and removes the dev signature? i.e., Revanced
That’s the whole intention of requiring TPM for Windows 11. It’s coming soon.
They also banned Kaspersky in the states because they weren’t whitelisting state malware.