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Will we be asked to provide instructions for booting Ubuntu on these systems, even when most of the work is done on the other operating system. For instance, currently we answer questions about OSX booting usb, and for booting windows on a mac 'running' Ubuntu, when these questions mostly require operations done in Windows or OSX?

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  • well, on arm secure boot - the answer is basically "you can't"... so, with windows 10 allowing oem's to completely lock down booting to other os's this could get interesting...
    – Mateo
    Jun 29, 2015 at 16:10

2 Answers 2

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I think history will repeat itself. Some mobile manufacturers created their android device with locked bootloader. Later they had to drop this because of peer pressure: pcw/motorola, engadget/htc:

There has been overwhelmingly customer feedback that people want access to open bootloaders on HTC phones. I want you to know that we've listened. Today, I'm confirming we will no longer be locking the bootloaders on our devices. Thanks for your passion, support and patience.

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Why wouldn't we? They'll be people wanting to use Ubuntu. That's who we're here to help!

It's going to be some time before we finally know how ugly the situation with UEFI really is. For example the last I heard W8/ARM certified devices are only allowed to run the OEM-installed OS but given quite how draconian that is, I'm not sure how many device makers will jump at ARM certification.

That said, I'm not sure how many OEMs care about supporting more than one OS. You don't have to look far to see that the main ones don't give a flying-monkey-████-banana about anything but Windows... It seems they probably make money from the bloat they install on top of Windows.

Perhaps Ubuntu would do better if there were more trialware bloat available for OEMs... I'm getting off-topic...

But yes, we'll answer them and keep answering them until we can't.

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  • Are you suggesting that Ubuntu should ship with Super-Lunch-Creator 2.0, MadTuxCarz, and 50 other application demos that I don't need or want? (Considering how easy it is to use apt-get remove I can't really see this working.) May 6, 2012 at 4:14
  • Sort of, yeah. I'm suggesting that OEMs would have more incentive to provide Ubuntu if they could ship it with trials of things like games and antivirus applications. I'm suggesting that's one way they make money from Windows users.
    – Oli Mod
    May 6, 2012 at 13:02
  • Well, I guess I could put up with that, knowing how easy a clean install would be in any case. May 6, 2012 at 19:29
  • my worry is we won't be able to answer, other than saying "windows won't let you"
    – Mateo
    May 6, 2012 at 19:55
  • FWIW, in my country (Brazil) Linux (not necessarily Ubuntu) is a very common desktop on government facilities, and some local OEMs ship with Linux by default. They even have manuals on how to use apt, etc. My girlfriend's first computer (like 5+ years ago) came with some KDE desktop pre-installed. May 11, 2012 at 10:39
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    RE: they probably make money from the bloat - Vendors don't usually earn a lot from the "bloat". It's a commonly known industry secret that Microsoft heavily sponsors the manufacturers and usually threatens to withdraw their Windows license altogether if a vendor wants to offer non-Windows machines -- and no hardware vendor can afford to not be able to offer Windows. Yes, it sounds like blackmail. Yes, it's probably illegal, or it would be if it were this obvious. We can only begin to imagine the elaborate legal labyrinth that enables MS to enforce this (semi)legally. May 13, 2012 at 19:53

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