zlacker

>>foodst+(OP)
The fearmongering about Pluton feels very similar to the criticism that was levied against UEFI Secure Boot when it was being debuted. In the end, x86 systems didn't become any more locked down.

I predict that this will blow over, and won't be a big deal in a few years time once FOSS drivers for what is effectively just a new breed of TPM are released.

If in five years, it turns out I was wrong, I'll eat my hat. Although defining "my hat" by then might be difficult, as it'll probably be subscription based.

>>messe+sa
> In the end, x86 systems didn't become any more locked down.

And non-x86 systems? Wasn't there a line of MS Surface devices where secure boot could not be disabled, and users were stuck with Windows? It feels careless to only care about x86, especially as other platforms proliferate.

In any case, lockdown is not the only threat that Trusted Computing presents. Remote attestation itself is dangerous. If we remove our x86 blinkers and look at the mobile world, we see it's already happening, with countless apps, including ones important to modern day life such as banking, refusing to run on rooted phones.

You may say, "Oh, I will use my x86 desktop system at home for Free Computing, and allow phones, consoles, tablets, surface devices, etc etc, to become locked down." Like the old free speech zones, this is a toothless freedom, tamed and neutered. The user-empowering Free Software you will write will have no users - they will be on locked devices.

>>jevote+zb
While that's true, with regard to some Surface devices, as I understand it, ARM systems have only become more open and interoperable over the past few years; although this holds true a lot more for the server side than desktop side.

The main issue these days is driver support. The PC platform was an anomaly in backwards compatibility, at least historically. I'm not arguing that it's going to be easy for FOSS. It's going to be an uphill battle, regardless of how locked down they are (and I'm just arguing that they won't be that locked down—see the recent M1 Macs for an example; Apple could easily have locked down those systems in exactly the same manner as iOS/iPadOS devices, but chose not to).

>>messe+ic
It's just really sad that Apple doesn't help us with drivers for their hardware, I highly doubt the majority would switch anyways, and assisting with info could be done with less effort if people are already doing reverse engineering work.

>>lillec+Zd
I suspect it's a mix of legal difficulties in releasing the documentation, and a lack of incentive to write it in the first place.

The ideal scenario would be Apple pushing their hardware in the server space; that might create an internal incentive for apple to get Linux running decently (or at the very least make Darwin a new competitor in the datacenter).