New Lenovo AMD Laptops With Pluton Co-Processor Reportedly Only Boot Windows By Default
www.phoronix.com
At least some of Lenovo's new AMD Rembrandt powered laptops with Microsoft Pluton security co-processor are set by default to only trust Microsoft's key and not the Microsoft 3rd Party UEFI CA Key that Linux distributions and others use for UEFI Secure Boot support

TLDR: Microsoft worked with Intel and AMD to develop Pluton which is basically a TPM chip designed to prevent running non-microsoft approved software. It will likely make it impossible to boot un-approved linux distros, bsd, and likely will make it very hard to run any un-approved software in the future.

This CPU "feature" is very likely to be a requirement for Windows 12 in 2024. Meaning nearly every computer available will have this and the majority of manufactures will not allow you to unlock the bootloader.

Similar situation to running LineageOS or PostmarketOS phones. For now, it can be "disabled" in bios on most of these computers, but that's simply a choice the OEM is making and will no longer need to make once this has become prevalent without any real pushback.

  • Flinch [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    nice, I just recently got a steam deck and have been having fun dicking around with it's Linux desktop environment, it's time to get Linux on my actual PC now I reckon

    • Mardoniush [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I keep looking at the Steam Deck, but the current prices in AU are eye-watering.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      How is gaming on Linux now? Gaming is the only reason I'm still using Windows and there seems to be less and less justification for that every year.

      • culpritus [any]
        ·
        2 years ago

        ya, it's a bit title dependent how well things work, but a whole lot of stuff works just fine with minimal fuss (steam has an option to 'run with proton' built in to the UI for linux version)

        if you have specific titles you play regularly, protonDB is worth a look to see how they run

        I've been happy enough with the selection for a few years now

      • Flinch [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        It works fine for me! There's a website I use, protondb.com with crowdsourced info about games and how they run on Linux, fixes on how to get them running, etc. It's been very handy!