[makaronin]

If you read the original reddit thread, you would understand that this is not just a drivers issue. Lenovo intentionally programmed their BIOS so that it reverts any changes to RAID mode making it impossible to install Linux.

[xg15]

True - but as the other HN thread (that I can't seem to find anymore ><) pointed out, if Microsoft's requirements were planned as an attack against free software, it would be an unnecessarily complicated and ineffective one: There is nothing stopping anyone from writing Linux drivers for the new RAID mode - and I guess if more models with this setup show up, eventually someone will write one.

On the other hand, Microsoft could have easily gotten a much more "robust" lockdown - by simply demanding mandatory, unchangeable Secure Boot like on the ARM tablets. But they didn't do that.

[josteink]

> - but as the other HN thread (that I can't seem to find anymore ><) pointed out,

Flagged as a dupe. It's here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12545966

[makaronin]

One guy has done a nice work decompiling the BIOS and found that skipping over the hidden BIOS pages is hard-coded into the firmware. See this https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Linux-Discussion/Installing-Ubu...

[brokenmachine]

Can they not modify that BIOS code to not skip those pages?

I'm sure anyone with enough knowledge to decompile a BIOS would have obviously thought of that idea though. I'm guessing the BIOS images are signed or something?

Regardless, this smells evil to me...

[slipstream-]

>On the other hand, Microsoft could have easily gotten a much more "robust" lockdown - by simply demanding mandatory, unchangeable Secure Boot like on the ARM tablets. But they didn't do that.

Didn't you hear that Secure Boot is basically broken?

[Natanael_L]

Those leaked provisioning certs can be blacklisted on new hardware

[aw3c2]

Is it meant as contra Linux though? Or just pro RAID?

[userbinator]

RAID on a machine with a single SSD (and no provision to add another)? It'd make far more sense if the BIOS was setup so the RAID option was always disabled.

Edit: it'd be rather amusing and saddening if this whole controversy was caused merely by someone misunderstanding/misreading a perfectly sensible requirement to disable the RAID mode, and instead disabled the other options. Given the level of communication fluency among some programmers, I would not be surprised if this were the case; and the fact that the machine still boots into Windows because it has drivers might've let this slip past QA...

[sveiss]

The choice seems to be between AHCI and sorta-NVMe, with the latter enabled in 'RAID' mode.

Sure, real/standards-conforming NVMe would be better -- and wouldn't require driver shenanigans in either Windows or Linux -- but there should be a performance advantage to 'RAID' mode in this case.

[josteink]

If it was meant contra Linux, it obviously failed as the Linux installer booted just fine.

[DanBC]

Also making it impossible to install Windows 10 downloaded directly from MS.

[minikites]

Or the bug is that it fails to properly store the initial change?