Every new Microsoft operating system comes with a set of requirements for manufacturers who want to certify their products. In the case of Windows 10, one of these requirements is UEFI 2.31 with the famous Secure Boot enabled. From a technical point of view, Secure Boot can be overridden without trouble, but there's a detail in the list Microsoft published: the feature that disables Secure Boot will be optional among OEMs.
Microsoft's confusing week
Microsoft seemed to be having a good week, but overnight it turned into a storm of confusion and annoyance. It all began with a vice president and a spokesperson separately stating that users of illegitimate copies could upgrade to Windows 10 for free. 24 hours later, both statements were thrown in the trash. Microsoft now says that updates will still be considered non-legitimate, but everyone who asked for more information on that point received only radio silence. Add to this the new list of requirements that Redmond published for OEMs interested in certifying their products. It should be clarified that the requirements aimed at a manufacturer are not the ones the general consumer must comply with. After the Windows Vista scandal, Microsoft seeks through certifications to guarantee a minimum base of compatibility and performance in all later versions of Windows, and Windows 10 is no exception.
Secure Boot and UEFI
Now, software and hardware go hand in hand, so we should always expect almost simultaneous changes. In the hardware world, many manufacturers have replaced the traditional BIOS with the UEFI system. Among the new Windows 10 requirements for OEMs we discover that the presence of UEFI 2.31 is mandatory, as is Secure Boot, which must be enabled by default. The goal of Secure Boot is to defend the integrity of the operating system by executing software and modules with the appropriate digital signature. Secure Boot sounds good on paper, but if poorly implemented it can cause many more problems than it solves, starting with the impossibility of installing a different operating system than Windows. This issue had already appeared with Windows 8, though manufacturers avoided the damage with a feature to disable Secure Boot. Unfortunately, that may not be the case with Windows 10, because Microsoft declared optional the existence of the feature that allows overriding Secure Boot.
In other words, an OEM could decide that its next line of computers is only compatible with Windows 10 by blocking the deactivation of Secure Boot. Other developers have reached a compromise (not highly appreciated by the open source community, to say the least) to allow their platforms to be installed on that kind of PC. Even so, the risk of harming the user remains. Whoever buys hardware should be able to do whatever they want with it. And if that includes installing two or three operating systems on the same computer alongside Windows 10, there is no reason to prevent it.
