Implementing UEFI Secure Boot in Fedora - BY PAYING MICROSOFT?!

Fedora 17 was released this week. It's both useful and free, and serves as a welcome addition to any family gathering. Do give it a go. But it's also noteworthy for another reason - it's the last Fedora release in the pre-UEFI secure boot era. Fedora 18 will be released at around the same time as Windows 8, and as previously discussed all Windows 8 hardware will be shipping with secure boot enabled by default. While Microsoft have modified their original position and all x86 Windows machines will be required to have a firmware option to disable this or to permit users to enrol their own keys, it's not really an option to force all our users to play with hard to find firmware settings before they can run Fedora. We've been working on a plan for dealing with this. It's not ideal, but of all the approaches we've examined we feel that this one offers the best balance between letting users install Fedora while still permitting user freedom.

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• Making UEFI Secure Boot Work With Open Platforms(Oct 28, 2011)
• Microsoft confirms UEFI fears, locks down ARM devices(Jan 15, 2012)
• Linux Foundation proposes to use UEFI to make PCs secure and free(Oct 29, 2011)
• UEFI "Secure Boot" and Microsoft Windows 8: The danger for free software(Oct 17, 2011)
• Free Software Foundation urges OEMs to say no to mandatory Windows 8 UEFI cage(Oct 19, 2011)
• Microsoft Responds to Linux Lock-Out Claims(Sep 27, 2011)
• Microsoft to lock out other operating systems from Windows 8 ARM PCs & devices(Jan 17, 2012)