Windows 10 [2014 - 2017]

Secure boot is only required for OEMs that sell computers with OS preinstalled, and was already required with Windows 8 IIRC. Latest info on it says that OEMs can choose whether to include switch for secure boot in the BIOS (UEFI) or not.
There's no indication that it would be required for user installed OS'es

 

To be even more precise, requiring secure boot would effectively kill their ability to resell to a large quantity of their upgrade-entitled machines out in the wild. Secure boot functionality is a relatively recent development, it's an optional component of the UEFI spec and for a very long time, wasn't an option that was being provided in a wide-spread way.

Also, even if your machine has the UEFI capability for secure boot, you must install the provided certificate for your operating system. Conceivably, you could digitally sign your own bootloader and then use your own cert for the UEFI secure boot check. This is a non-trivial task though, regardless of operating system, because of the interaction with the firmware that is necessary to make it all work.

Also, did you know that current (and recent past) Fedora Linux can install on any Microsoft secure boot hardware? Fedora used Microsoft as a signing authority on the kernel, so it will install without issue on a secure boot-enabled machine that once housed Windows 8 (or upcoming Windows 10) without deactivating the secure boot function in the UEFI.

I saw some "OMG DOOM AND GLOOM" fear-uncertainty-doubt articles show up on the web over the weekend, along the lines of how Linux was destined to die when Microsoft brings the hammer of secure boot -- as if Microsoft could even do such a thing if they wanted to. This is why I presume davros posted the question...

 

to get windows 8 certified label
- oem must have secure boot option
- oem must allow it to be disabled

to get windows 10 certified label
- oem must have secure boot (its okay if they did not allow it to be disabled)

 

That's not good. So an OEM W10 certified computer could never load a legacy or alternative OS?

 

Secure boot means that the bootloader is digitially signed by a root certificate that is stored (and thus trusted) within the UEFI. There's nothing specifically nefarious about it.

If you have an older operating system that does not support digitally signing the boot loader, then yes -- you'll have problems getting it loaded on the most modern hardware in a bare-metal fashion. If you need an older OS? Virtualize it, Hyper-V is native to Windows 8 and later. Further, more modern operating systems (I mentioned Fedora upstream) already works with the existing Microsoft root cert stored in these "Windows 10" machines.

 

Thanks for having used the word 'nefarious' because I didn't even know it in my native language, Spanish

 

So how are we liking the progression of the builds?

Me, I'm a little disappointed that various bits have got more Win8ish than the initial build.
eg from a drag re-sizable Start menu in first build its now fixed size with a 'full screen' toggle.
But there are some bits of that which are actually quite substantial GUI improvements, quite liking the unified Settings panel for example.

If they follow that through unifying all the legacy fixed size popup & Vista style stuff into that GUI format it'll be a solid advance.
Leaving off bits in the old style would be a shame.

I think the window controls on the Metro stuff is done well, makes those bits feel mostly like a normal window.

Latest build brought back Start transparency

Now, if only the proper desktop style Cleartype would turn up...

 

English language often uses some classical Latin words that are less common in other languages, are encountered in some derived word only or are not used anymore, e.g. the verb "vindicate". Alright, it's in Spanish ("vindicar") but not in French, though you have "reinvindicar" and we have the same as "revendiquer".
I'm having a revelation : english "vindication" was very similar to french "revendication", though different.

 

There were such fears over ten years ago, when the big bad computer locking was known as the Microsoft Palladium project. We were headed towards a dystopia where it would probably even be illegal to hack the "protection" away, sort of a Soylent Green or Brave New World but for the PC. It was fun to believe in that, at least.

 

Yeah, I remember bits and pieces about Palladium. I had to go hit Wikipedia to remember the larger parts of it, and it seems to me that they're farther down that path than some folks realize.

If you enable the optional Client Hyper-V component in Windows 8, your boot process actually starts the Hyper-V hypervisor as the kernel, and then grants a logical hardware partition (a "parent" partition) to your host operating system. All guests (VM's that you create) will then land in child partitions alongside (but not underneath) the parent.

Want to see how eerily similar Palladium and Windows 8's Client Hyper-V are?
Look at the Wikipedia "Next Generation Secure Computing Base" (aka Palladium) graphical representation on this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next-Generation_Secure_Computing_Base

Now, look at the Hyper-V graphical representation on this page (scroll down a few paragraphs, it's the first inline picture): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper-V

Look familiar?

There will be a time, perhaps even in Windows 10, but more likely the next release, where the Windows "host" operating system will come with the hypervisor already enabled as part of the base install. When you can abstract at a level below the host operating system, in a digitally-signed, secure-booted and TPM-key-encrypted hypervisor, you've landed in Palladium. You can already do it today, but you must enable the feature of your own accord first.

 

More Win8ish? AFAIK, you've never been able to resize the start menu in Windows. You could add applications to the start menu in Vista/Win7 which could eventually make the start menu "taller" but you couldn't manually resize it to an arbitrary size. So it's more like legacy Windows style which is what everyone was asking for (versus Win8).

Regards,
SB

 

cheers, though I was more wanting an outside opinion, as Im sure this being from the company invloved saiz it all 'works better than perfect'

 

While you could never do that in previous Windows either, the implementation felt very Win7ish to me & the new one has more of a Win8 style to it.
I don't think thats really much of an issue though, its definitely more pleasant than the old Win8 fullscreen thing.

 

Seems very strange wording given that a lot of pirate copies of Windows quite happily report themselves as genuine. That is after all what all the pirate solutions to Windows licensing are designed to do.

 

You were able to close the start menu in Windows 95. Open it, then hit escape, the button is then "selected", then you can hit alt+space and select "Move" or "Close", the latter of it makes it disappear. Then your start menu is wasted!

 

that's the task bar, not the start menu.

 

Ah, gotcha. I'll be staying with the full screen Start Screen (thank god they didn't get rid of it). But I'm extremely happy that they brought back the menu for folks that still prefer that.

Regards,
SB

 

I haven't been keeping up with windows 10 so I have a simple question: Will recently used programs and/or documents be back in the start menu? I really miss that functionality, I wish they had put it in the charms bar in win8.

 

On Win7 I always just rick-clicked the application icon on the taskbar to get the app-specific recent documents.