ASUS LINUX+Free BIOS support

[Zygomorphic]

Hello all ROG users and @asus people!

In light of Microsoft's actions towards the "Secure Boot" technology integrated
into the UEFI of Windows 8 certified computers, the LINUX community is working
on trying to find methods of creating signed open-source boot-loaders.
Considering that it was ASUS who started off the netbook craze (remember that
lol :p) with LINUX as the operating system, might it not be time to consider
supporting officially a LINUX distro on at least a few different computer lines?
There are companies presently selling systems with LINUX pre-installed and
supported, but the computers are universally underpowered and/or low quality.
ASUS makes quality hardware as we know, and so I would like to see quality
LINUX-based computers in the future.

Even more, the Free Software Foundation is advocating for a "Free BIOS" and I
think that this might be a potential market for ASUS to consider. Offer a
high-quality laptop that can run with a GPL'd BIOS, and then officially sanction
a completely LINUX distro on it. You might be able to gain some recommendations
with the Free Software Foundation/Community over this, which would be awesome!
There would then be a real quality alternative to Microsoft Windows-based PCs.

While I am well aware that the potential market for this is small, it might be
enough to be profitable if ASUS manages to jump the gun and take over that
market entirely, before any of the potentially major contenders enter this
market. I am a strong LINUX fan, so I would like to see LINUX become mainstream
on the desktop, and if quality hardware vendors push, it could happen.

I am positive that Microsoft would not certify any computer that allowed the
user to have access to the BIOS source code, since that would allow people to
install alternative operating systems. While we can presently disable the
"Secure Boot" by configuring the settings in the BIOS, we should all remember
that initially Microsoft was going to prevent any platform from being
able to install LINUX, and only backed down after several LINUX vendors
threatened a lawsuit. Their certified ARM systems still cannot install
alternative operating systems, even after Microsoft reversed the decision on the
x86 platform.

As a result of the limited market, I would recommend potentially creating
systems that have the ability to run with either the Microsoft-signed "Secure
Boot" and are sold with Windows, and then versions with the GPL'd "Free BIOS"
running a completely free LINUX distro. The FSF recommends the Trisquel (Ubuntu
derivative) distro for new users, which is something that ASUS should take into
consideration.

Thanks, and just as a note, I am not a member of the FSF, nor affiliated with
them in any way. Just a LINUX user worried about the tactics that Microsoft is
using to force other operating systems out of the market.

[Myk_SilentShado]

DaemonCantor wrote:
See MYK Old Codgers like me are needed for something....:p Hell I remember using Key Punch machines to Program back in 1973....:cool::p;)

You mean other than to make me feel young? 😛 😄 😉

OK!!! I downloaded OpenSUSE 12.2...now I just needa get my hands on another drive to install it to...may rip out the 120 Samsung I have in my Server...if I don't need to use it for a while for my studies lol

[Zygomorphic]

Myk SilentShadow wrote:
You mean other than to make me feel young? 😛 😄 😉

OK!!! I downloaded OpenSUSE 12.2...now I just needa get my hands on another drive to install it to...may rip out the 120 Samsung I have in my Server...if I don't need to use it for a while for my studies lol

Just partition one of your existing drives and install there! 🙂 It's not at all hard. I do that with my LINUX installations. LINUX can boot out of an extended partition, so there isn't the 4-partition limit that you find on MBR hard drives. Just let GRUB be the boot-loader, and it will do everything pretty much automagically. lol 😛

[Myk_SilentShado]

Zygomorphic wrote:
Just partition one of your existing drives and install there! 🙂 It's not at all hard. I do that with my LINUX installations. LINUX can boot out of an extended partition, so there isn't the 4-partition limit that you find on MBR hard drives. Just let GRUB be the boot-loader, and it will do everything pretty much automagically. lol 😛

Amazingly I still remember all that 😛 though, now I don't have to use Partition Magic to create the partitions if I wanted to, but, i'd rather put it on a seperate drive, at least to test it out...my 120GB Force GT has about half it's capacity left and I don't wanna go too much further over.

[Zygomorphic]

Myk SilentShadow wrote:
Amazingly I still remember all that 😛 though, now I don't have to use Partition Magic to create the partitions if I wanted to, but, i'd rather put it on a seperate drive, at least to test it out...my 120GB Force GT has about half it's capacity left and I don't wanna go too much further over.

OK, that makes sense, especially if you want the maximum SSD performance.

[AllGamer]

Linux is my main OS, i'd like to see that happen
in the meantime i'm still flashing new BIOS from the EZ flash utility in the BIOS
i only boot back to Windoze when games wont run properly on WINE, DOSbox or any sort of emulation

[Zygomorphic]

AllGamer wrote:
Linux is my main OS, i'd like to see that happen
in the meantime i'm still flashing new BIOS from the EZ flash utility in the BIOS
i only boot back to Windoze when games wont run properly on WINE, DOSbox or any sort of emulation

OS-based BIOS flashing is always dangerous, since the OS can mess things up more easily, with all that extra stuff running around.

[rhozac]

Sorry for rezzing, but now more than ever would it be great with a open source bios, i mean if a backdoor is installed at the bios level even running *nix could be considered unsafe. Granted you could say the same thing about all chips with proprietary firmware. Gotta start doing the right thing at some point. Open BIOS is not a bad way to start.

[Zygomorphic]

Good point, glad you rezed it. It is an issue that ASUS should consider, since they started the netbook craze (remember that? :D) with the Eee PC. It ran a version of LINUX at the beginning, and that was one of the best points. I would like to see more LINUX based sysems being made, since they could dump the MS license cost and sell just hardware without all the attendant stuff. Choose a distro like LINUX Mint or Ubuntu for simplicity and hardware compatibility, since LINUX power users can just install the distro of their choice.

[rhozac]

Well there is secureboot aswell, wich i was excited to hear about, cause iv suffered deep nested rootkits in the past, then im hearing a single commercial company will be handling the keys and closed sourced intrics. Shocked, a general security implementation that spans across 99% of computing devices will be handled by MS? What the fart. This is obviously something that has to be transparent to actually add any security and evolve into something hardened. Complete fail. And even worse noone seemed to care much at all, apart from pushing the please MS let us still be able to boot other operating systems, envelope. Security through closed source and obfuscation has already been proven to be inferiour to opensource, why would we make that misstake again. Sigh. And what about my boot time rootkits and trojans? No thell still be around as much or more as they used to be, cause now that secure boot is enabled only the NSA will have backdoors into my system right? Noone else will ever hack that closed source piece of garbage. Bleh.

[Zygomorphic]

I would say that we should start with eliminating "Secure" Boot being solely handled by Microsoft. If it were about security, they would be willing to open it to everyone to examine. If ASUS is willing to either ship notebooks without Secure Boot, or better yet (but less likely) push Microsoft to pursue an open standard on security where the experts have a say in the design, that would be great. LINUX users have the software side pretty well covered, and we can start that ball rolling to encourage people to dump Windows and go to LINUX.