Bonum Certa Men Certa

Linux Wins the Devices OS War, Microsoft Tries to Lock it Out With UEFI

UEFI



Summary: Microsoft responds to defeat by playing dirty, but many people speak out against this

STEVE Ballmer says that Microsoft Is a "Devices and Services Company", notes Tracy. "Anyone else happy to see that? They don't claim to be an OS company anymore" he says. "They are losing their grip on the market via the OS and the Windows mobile OS barely has any market share."

Here is one such article which speaks of Ballmer's revealing words. Some of the weakest points are being pushed forth as strengths.

Vista 8 has been slammed by several hardware companies, so what devices was Ballmer talking about? Microsoft needs a lot of brainwash to save the monopoly, so it throws billions into public relations with a dedicated shill who was appointed internally: "Guggenheimer had served as corporate vice president of Microsoft’s OEM division, and in his new role Guggenheimer replaces Walid Abu-Hadba."

We wrote about Guggenheimer before [1, 2] due to ugly things which were done. It was about anti-competitive behaviour.

"As a side note, OpenBSD and the FSF should be praised whereas Linux Foundation denounced for playing along with this, even if passively."Additionally, Microsoft makes Linux booting harder on hardware using UEFI requirements that writers complain about. As one put it: "EFI, and the later UEFI specification, is not the problem for Linux. The problem is Microsoft's other requirement for any Windows 8-certified client: the system must support secure booting. This hardened boot means that all firmware and software in the boot process must be signed by a trusted Certificate Authority (CA)."

The Microsoft boosters hide the problem with UEFI, but notable figures speak out loudly: "The un-unified efforts by these distributions did not go very well with the entire open source community. OpenBSD founder Theo de Raadt criticized both Canonical and Red Hat. "I fully understand that Red Hat and Canonical won't be doing the right thing, they are traitors to the cause, mostly in it for the money and power. They want to be the new Microsoft.""

Theo de Raadt is right on this one.

Microsoft is losing the OS war because of devices. Linux and Android reign there. So Microsoft is resorting to dirty demands from device makers.

As a side note, OpenBSD and the FSF should be praised whereas Linux Foundation denounced for playing along with this, even if passively.

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