Re: [PLUG] Cheap x86 Windows tablet?

On Wed, Sep 9, 2015, 20:34 Rich Mingin (PLUG) <plug@frags.us> wrote:

Oh, you can disable Secure Boot on S3Pro. It just makes the boot splash a white "Microsoft" on a screaming red background instead of a black one, and it prints an informative little scare lecture about how you're letting the evil hackers in. I don't know that you can self-register keys, but it's possible. I returned mine after a week or so, since it kept giving me a hard time no matter what OS I was running.

More important than the awkwardness and obstinacy of the firmware, IMO, is the dodgy and not-quite-standard hardware that will give you all sorts of fits.

For a discussion, we can go on, but for someone considering buying one of those things, I hope enough ill has been said already.

On Wed, Sep 9, 2015 at 8:09 PM, Rich Freeman <r-plug@thefreemanclan.net> wrote:
On Wed, Sep 9, 2015 at 7:13 PM, Rich Mingin (PLUG) <plug@frags.us> wrote:
> Surface 3 Pro is a somewhat-standard-ish Core i5/i5/i7 PC, and while it's
> possible to put Linux on it (there's an arch-surface3 mailing list I
> follow), it's far from issue-free, there are long lists of gotchas and
> sorta-working items. It's also actively hostile to booting non-MS OSes, via
> the UEFI and the difficulties in disabling Secure Boot.
>

Interesting. I believe MS's stated policy is to support disabling
secure boot or changing the key on x86, and to forbid this on ARM.
That largely agrees with your email, but this is the first that I've
heard that the Surface Pro has a bootloader which is hard to change
the key on. Is that really the case, or is this just like any other
EFI motherboard out there now?

--
Rich

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___________________________________________________________________________
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Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug

___________________________________________________________________________ Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug