Both the Linux Foundation and a joint Canonical/Red Hat effort have released two white papers concerning the UEFI Secure Boot functionality. They explore what the feature means for Linux, what dangers we face and what we might do about them.

The first is Making UEFI Secure Boot Work With Open Platforms by James Bottomley and Jonathan Corbet; it is published by the Linux Foundation. “Linux and other open operating systems will be able to take advantage of secure boot if it is implemented properly in the hardware. This document is intended to describe how the UEFI secure boot specification can be implemented to interoperate well with open systems and to avoid adversely affecting the rights of the owners of those systems while providing compliance with proprietary software vendors’ requirements.”

UEFI Secure Boot Impact on Linux, published by Red Hat and Canonical, was written by Jeremy Kerr, Matthew Garrett, and James Bottomley. “We present a set of recommendations that will allow users the freedom to choose their software, while retaining the security features of UEFI Secure Boot, and complying with open source licenses used in distributions of Linux.”

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Both the Linux Foundation and a joint Canonical/Red Hat effort have released two white papers concerning the UEFI Secure Boot functionality. They explore what the feature means for Linux, what dangers we face and what we might do about them. The first is Making UEFI Secure Boot Work With Open Platforms by James Bottomley and Jonathan Corbet; it ...