Bonum Certa Men Certa

How Secure Boot Could Have Ruined My First Linux Experience And Why IBM Is Making Things Worse.

Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer. Also available in Gemini

Historically, using Free and Open Source Software has been a “license to tinker”, and Linux was no exception.



If it didn’t do something you needed it to do, you could patch it with “something I found”.



If that hadn’t been the case, I would have never been able to start using Mandrake Linux in the 1990s.



You see, the family computer had this horrible piece of hardware in it called a “Winmodem”. And let me tell you about those.



Pretty much as the name implies, the manufacturer dropped a Windows driver, which essentially was the modem.



Theoretically, this had benefits, like the modem could be updated by simply installing a new driver, since most of the logic for the thing is in the software, which runs on the computer, in the Windows 98 kernel in my case.



But that benefit hardly ever materialized. If any manufacturer actually sold you a modem and then later updated you to v.90 or v.92 or something, I’m not aware of it.



They left me at K56Flex and x2, two competing specifications written by rival companies, that predated the ITU standard for v.90 and v.92 56k dial up modems.



Fortunately, most ISPs supported one, the other, or both, in which case it would go ahead and work, but the modem itself was STILL a problem.



Because you only had the Windows driver, and because it implemented the entire modem, without Windows, the modem did nothing. You had no Internet access at all. Dead hardware.



Fortunately, I found the source code to a module that I could compile and add to Linux, and it made the modem work well enough, that I could at least get by until I had saved enough to buy a Zoom 56k modem that supported the actual ITU standards.



The Winmodem was a parasite. Even under Windows, the damn thing made the entire system hang whenever it picked up or hung up the phone line, and then while it was running, it stole CPU time for the driver.



So, this is basically my “Richard Stallman and the Printer” story.



Eventually I was able to remove the Winmodem and the (somewhat unstable) out-of-tree driver, but when I needed to patch the kernel, nothing stopped me. Nothing could have stopped me because nobody had lost their mind and thought Microsoft was a security company.



We didn’t have these ridiculous “Security” charades by the purveyor of the least secure software on the planet.



(“Secure” Boot offers no advantages and the GNOME Desktop has even been tarred and feathered by a “Security” Theater screen by people at IBM Red Hat…… I use KDE now.)



While it is much less common now to encounter the need to run unsigned modules, everyone should be allowed to, without Microsoft in their way. Or in the way of even booting the computer.



Unfortunately with IBM Red Hat’s assistance, crazier things than “Secure” Boot are happening.



This includes the outlandish notion that most of the file system should be read-only (“immutable”) and shouldn’t be within the user’s reach because Apple does this with a toy OS.



How is the user supposed to edit flat configuration files to make systemd (their other disaster) behave differently? How is the user supposed to take software they want in /opt and put it in /opt?



I don’t think you can. And the “Transactional Upgrade” system sounds horrible.



An “everything or nothing” upgrade of every package on the system, even if some are broken, and the only thing you can do if some are is roll the entire thing back?



I will never install a distribution with an immutable file system.



These distributions are worse than useless.



Even IBM Fedora, which has been banging this drum the loudest, has had an immutable “spin” forever, says they’ll make it “Workstation” someday, and well, that hasn’t happened.



There’s just no way to make it actually work. Not if you want to configure the system at all, or do something like dnf update –security.



Don’t even get me started on “kernel lockdown”, where even root is somehow not allowed to change kernel variables.



If a user has so seriously misconfigured their system that a vulnerability exists, let them live with that.



But this really has nothing to do with Security. It’s about walling the user off from their own computer to enforce Windows, or at the very least, make Digital Restrictions Malware (DRM) more effective on Linux.



Quit screwing up my laptop.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Lies Need to be Corrected
the Court never invited us
 
'Help Net Security' (helpnetsecurity.com) May Have Become a Slopfarm as Well
Zeljka Zorz, Editor-in-Chief at Help Net Security, was reported to us
Gemini Links 17/10/2025: Rant About Network Solutions, Strange Anomaly on Lagrange
Links for the day
EPO Staff Representation Lacks Social Dialogue With Relevant Management, Controversial and Sometimes Illegal Policies Implemented Without Necessary Input
"In this open letter, the CSC requests that the President submits an agenda item in the next available General Consultative Committee (GCC) meeting on setting up regular meetings between the CSC and the higher management of DG1."
Links 16/10/2025: Political Leftovers and Gemini Protocol Links
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Guardian Digital (linuxsecurity.com), Slashdot, Google News, and More
Maybe one day, once the bubble pops completely, Google News will just outright delist all slopfarms
Lufthansa Modern Slavery, Joerg Jaspert (ganneff) & Debian NSB Softwareentwicklung charade
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 16/10/2025: US Starting More Trade Wars With China, CIA War on Venezuela
Links for the day
SUSE Blog is Still LLM Slop, Marketing Manager at SUSE Cannot Write
Would you buy from a company or seek support from a company that cannot even write (or fakes writing)?
Pretend You're Not Dead: Microsoft Spent Almost Two Decades Rebranding Things as "Cloud, Then "AI", Now "XBox" and "Quantum"
"AI" bubble pops, Microsoft harping about "quantum" already
IBM Allegedly Found New Tricks for Silent Layoffs: LPI, Then MIS (Not PIP)
Remember that "Red Hat layoffs" won't be reported after the bluewashing
Links 16/10/2025: Red Lines and Feeding of Microsoft Trolls
Links for the day
MIT as a Propaganda Mill of GAFAM, Paid by GAFAM
"the news" today
Links 16/10/2025: Lies Euphemised as ‘Dueling Versions of Reality’ and Microsoft "Open" "Hey Hi" Resorts to Porn as No Business Model Was Found
Links for the day
The Local Staff Committee Munich (Representation of the EPO's Staff) Explains When Cluster of Pregnancies May Result in Reduced Pay
"...even one week of part-time working is sufficient to reduce the salary you perceive during the entirety of your maternity leave."
Another Black Eye for 'Secure Boot', Microsoft Media Tries to Blame "Linux"
It enables Microsoft to remotely control computers, even computers that don't run Windows and never had any Microsoft software installed
Slopwatch: UbuntuPIT, linuxsecurity.com, and Various Slopfarms in Google News Attacking "Linux"
A new survey of the Web said that the majority of the Web is now slop (that's being said in the news this week)
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 15, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 15, 2025
Links 16/10/2025: Increased Use of Social Control Media Surveillance in US, French Rage Over Pensions
Links for the day
Links 15/10/2025: Qantas Airways Loses Control of Sensitive Data and Software Patents Are Being Thrown Out
Links for the day
Vista 10 is 'Dead', Here's Why People Should Move to GNU/Linux (or the BSDs)
Today we try to make an outline of reasons move away from Windows to GNU/Linux
Our Sites Continue to Improve
LLM slop has had no noticeable impact on us
Gemini Links 15/10/2025: Neovim, Helix Compared and Gemlog.blue Now Closed
Links for the day
Links 15/10/2025: Mass Layoffs at Amazon, OneDrive Spyware Revved Up, More 'Gen Z Protests'
Links for the day
The EPO's Staff Engagement Survey 2025 is Already Tainted by Intimidation by EPO Management (Trying to Influence Outcomes by Scaring Genuine, Honest Critics)
"[W]e have received reports that, following the previous survey, teams with negative responses were reproached or questioned about their answers..."
The DDoS Attacks by Microsoft's Scam Altman and Other Slop Charlatans and Frauds is Hurting the FSF, Delinking It From Copyleft Projects
This impacts a lot more than access to the licences
Microsoft Scanning Faces in Photos People Upload to Microsoft (Even Unconsciously), Slashdot Turns Report About It Into "Microsoft Sez" (Says)
Or "let's repeat the lies from a PR person/Microsoft's publicist"
[Teaser] Angel Aledo Lopez the Manipulator (Nepotism, Poll Rigging, and Other EPO Corruption)
We'll discuss this later today or tomorrow, based on internal EPO material
Attacks on Techrights Are Only Making Techrights Bigger and Even More Popular
A week ago they offered to settle with us
Epic Metaphor for End of IBM: "The IBM Demolition is Down to the Last Shards!"
Nothing lasts forever
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 14, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 14, 2025
Proprietary and DRM Prisons Spiralling Down the Sinkhole? Not Just Yet.
Let's hope that more people will flee to GNU/Linux
The European Patent Office (EPO), the Second-Largest Institution in Europe, is Cracking Down on Recreational Activities
Without AMICALE activities, and as staff already says it's pressured to work more for less, how can the EPO recruit bright people?
Transparency: FSFE financial reports exclude speaker fees and expenses
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock