The quest for a Linux operating system dual booting on a Windows 8 PC apparently took another hit recently. There actually are two solutions for this, one from the Linux Foundation, and another that is being developed by Linux programmer Matthew Garret.
Both are in early stages of development, and the latest news is both projects may merge into one. But Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux is any angry young man over inserting Windows 8 secure boot keys into the Linux kernel.
A report over at ZDNet shows that Red Hat software engineer David Howells recently hit up Torvalds on a message board on the Linux Kernel Mailing List, asking his thoughts on a move that would allow Linux to boot on a Windows 8 PC with binary-only drivers, such as the ones used by AMD and NVIDIA chipsets.
And boy, he got his thoughts, and more.
Torvalds objected to the suggestion directly, going it as far to call it “f****** moronic”. And then in another message he added:
“If Red Hat wants to deep-throat Microsoft, that’s *your* issue. That has nothing what-so-ever to do with the kernel I maintain. It’s trivial for you guys to have a signing machine that parses the PE binary, verifies the signatures, and signs the resulting keys with your own key. You already wrote the code, for chissake, it’s in that f****** pull request.”
Wowzers! No love lost between the operating systems, it seems.
This pretty much leaves Linux users that want a dual boot system with Windows 8 in for a lengthy wait. While some early solutions exist, it may be months (or maybe even years) until they are fully and correctly implemented.
