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.

  • TrudeauCastroson [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I unlocked the bootloader on my cheapo Xiaomi phone but that's a feature that can be taken away quite easily because you need a Windows app that I haven't found an official source for, and it makes you wait a week.

    It should be allowed to be unlocked by default. I use the official ROM because the unofficial camera apps aren't very good, but at least I got system-wide adblock and figured out how to get banking apps and Netflix to work.