Increased Use Of Windows BitLocker Is Causing Headaches For Linux Dual Booting

[Anux]

As I said - obsessed gamers.

You seem to be quiet narrow minded, whats with the non obsessed gamers? Or why is gaming not a valid use case?

We've had USB pass-through in VMs for many years now. That's a very rare edge case where you can only access a specialized device directly from bare metal Windows. In which case you should probably just have a dedicated Windows box for it (or find better devices to use).

A VM needs more hardware (RAM, CPU cores) than a bare metal system therefore more expensive and a second machine even more so. Whats so bad with dual boot that you rather spend money on the problem? Whats with those not bathing in money?

[drakonas777]

You, Volta and drakonas777 on the other hand just cannot stop insulting me

One may say that most of your comments are insulting, because they consist of intentionally misleading information, cherry-picked facts and some out-of-context mental gymnastics to serve you to express your subjective and biased view of computer hardware and other topics.

PS. You should "grow some skin", because that constant crying of yours regarding being insulted by different opinion sounds ridiculous and childish.

[rickyx]

Sounds like an obsessed gamer thing.

I do rendering and calculations, especially in the 3d world, for work.
Better benchmarks help me do my work in less time and, in some cases, make better use of the system by decreasing my utility bill and my energy impact!

[binarybanana]

I agree with everything you said. However, the claim made that Azure has nothing to do with Linux was disingenuous at best. If a big client needed this issue addressed for some Azure use case (or anything else that would make them money), then Microsoft would have a solution within a month.

Ah, yes, I can see what you mean.

[torsionbar28]

All companies are $profit$ friendly and nothing more. The ones that "don't get paid $billions" to contribute code and what not do so because they earn money as an effect of it as well. At most, the difference may be some make the money directly off offering good Linux support (Amazon, MS, RHEL for licenses) and some benefit from the software itself (saving on servers when the kernel runs efficiently, such as Netflix and Facebook, Google by spying on Android devices). No company has your best interest at heart, all of them has their own self benefit (or, rather, their investors') as the top and only priority. A company being FLOSS friendly generally means they have a business model that is, at the time, convenient to FLOSS software, not that they're selfless.

Duh, profit is the reason any business exists. Those who have been around Linux for a while however, recognize the difference between a company that is outright hostile to Linux, with intentionally obfuscated proprietary file formats and protocols, closed API's, etc. -- and a company who engages with the community, provides hardware register details so the FOSS community can build drivers, has open API's and protocols and file formats so the FOSS community can build software that interacts cleanly, etc. Microsoft is quite clearly the former.

[sinepgib]

Duh, profit is the reason any business exists.

Well, OP (I won't bother checking the user to be quite honest) does not seem to understand this, as they say they only care about profit as if that was special of them.

Those who have been around Linux for a while however, recognize the difference between a company that is outright hostile to Linux, with intentionally obfuscated proprietary file formats and protocols, closed API's, etc. -- and a company who engages with the community, provides hardware register details so the FOSS community can build drivers, has open API's and protocols and file formats so the FOSS community can build software that interacts cleanly, etc. Microsoft is quite clearly the former.

I've been around enough to know that. But I've been around the real world enough to know it's only business. Right now, some cases are useful to Microsoft and they contribute, and some cases are irrelevant to them and they don't. Simple as that. Same happens for any company. Of course Microsoft would be hostile during the time Linux was active competition rather than part of their business plan. On the desktop they no longer need hostility, as they won already. They just don't need to cooperate with it either. On other platforms, they cooperate because there's a business case to do so. Locking desktop computers has a business case that goes beyond whether or not Linux is a thread to their business (it isn't), which is marketing straightforward security to consumers and company users.

You seem to be quiet narrow minded, whats with the non obsessed gamers? Or why is gaming not a valid use case?

A VM needs more hardware (RAM, CPU cores) than a bare metal system therefore more expensive and a second machine even more so. Whats so bad with dual boot that you rather spend money on the problem? Whats with those not bathing in money?

Welcome to Phoronix, where RAM is cheap and 2020's computers are obsolete garbage.

Several OSs implementing the same solution for full-disk encryption would be nice... MS now "loves Linux" and has linux devs with the relevant skillset on their payroll so they can probably solve the issue if they feel like it... ... nah

There needs to be a compelling business case, and dual boot just ain't one. They could do it for reputation (all publicity is good after all) if the task were trivial, but it isn't.

[erniv2]

A VM needs more hardware (RAM, CPU cores) than a bare metal system therefore more expensive and a second machine even more so. Whats so bad with dual boot that you rather spend money on the problem? Whats with those not bathing in money?

Heh when did that happen ? VM´s where developed so you safe hardware and energy, cause you only run 1 System and can run multiple OS instances, it´s there to save you money, make you more productive, instead of waiting for a reboot you can just open your vm and do your stuff there.

If you want to run just a small linux server setup in a vm you only need to assign 1-2 cores and 1 gb ram to it and cause the cpu idles alot of time it would even be hardly noticeable in the host system performance wise, hey you could even limit the cpu useage to only 50% so the host can even have more cpu time while the vm sits there in the background doing it´s thing and even use memory ballon so the ram useage shrinks when unused Oo.

And even running a full linux distribution with kde plasma in a vm works perfectly fine with 2-4 cores and 4gb ram.

Every pc bought in the last 8 years should have a 4 core cpu with atleast 8gb ram and vt/svm letting it run vm´s at decent speeds, my last pc was a 2nd hand amd fx 8120 with 8gb i got it back 2016 and since it was 2nd hand it was 3 years old allready then and i bet if i fire it up right now it will run, no money needed.

[marlock]

There needs to be a compelling business case, and dual boot just ain't one. They could do it for reputation (all publicity is good after all) if the task were trivial, but it isn't.

IIRC they bought the BitLocker IP, so they could in theory just relicense and opensource it and let other do the hard work. Where patents are involved, they could contribute the relevant ones to OIN. They probably won't.

It's OK. It's not a terrible insurmountable issue on its own... except this is not happening in the void.

IMHO the most concerning part of linux vs. windows booting now is the Pluton chip shenanigans.

Add to that the current topic plus the new microsoft certification requirement (tied to pluton) that 3rd-party certificates be disabled by default (meaning linux liveusb sticks, separate drives outside the scope of BitLocker full-disk encryption and etc will fail to boot) and the lack of cross-vendor UEFI design best practices for ensuring users can boot any OS in an equaly easy and secure manner means we are again a couple more sneezes away from having x86-64 machines where booting linux is impracticable even for non-expert but reasonably savvy users users, akin to the smartphone and tablet scene (which is deplorable!!!).

It's not that I think it will happen... it probably won't... but it won't because someone will put their time and resources into fighting it and applying pressure on Microsoft to stop it from going too far... just like when UEFI was created, etc, etc

[sinepgib]

Heh when did that happen ? VM´s where developed so you safe hardware and energy, cause you only run 1 System and can run multiple OS instances, it´s there to save you money, make you more productive, instead of waiting for a reboot you can just open your vm and do your stuff there.

No. VMs have two uses: isolation and emulation. None of them is about saving hardware and energy.
It "saves hardware" in servers only because isolation allows you to put more independent services in a single big box, actually using its resources. But the catch is that, always, ab-so-lute-ly always, VMs introduce overhead, specially in terms of memory. Hypervisors mitigate, but DO NOT eliminate that overhead.
The case for a Windows VM is the latter use, you have a native Linux install but need to run Windows software, fire up a Windows VM.

If you want to run just a small linux server setup in a vm you only need to assign 1-2 cores and 1 gb ram to it and cause the cpu idles alot of time it would even be hardly noticeable in the host system performance wise, hey you could even limit the cpu useage to only 50% so the host can even have more cpu time while the vm sits there in the background doing it´s thing and even use memory ballon so the ram useage shrinks when unused Oo.

And even running a full linux distribution with kde plasma in a vm works perfectly fine with 2-4 cores and 4gb ram.

Every pc bought in the last 8 years should have a 4 core cpu with atleast 8gb ram and vt/svm letting it run vm´s at decent speeds, my last pc was a 2nd hand amd fx 8120 with 8gb i got it back 2016 and since it was 2nd hand it was 3 years old allready then and i bet if i fire it up right now it will run, no money needed.

You do that and now you have 1GB and 1-2 cores less to use in your Windows setup in the light case, yay!
And no, I've seen computers selling even now with less than 8GB RAM. Not everyone is full of cash

IIRC they bought the BitLocker IP, so they could in theory just relicense and opensource it and let other do the hard work. Where patents are involved, they could contribute the relevant ones to OIN. They probably won't.

But again, what's in it for them?

It's OK. It's not a terrible insurmountable issue on its own... except this is not happening in the void.

IMHO the most concerning part of linux vs. windows booting now is the Pluton chip shenanigans.

Add to that the current topic plus the new microsoft certification requirement (tied to pluton) that 3rd-party certificates be disabled by default (meaning linux liveusb sticks, separate drives outside the scope of BitLocker full-disk encryption and etc will fail to boot) and the lack of cross-vendor UEFI design best practices for ensuring users can boot any OS in an equaly easy and secure manner means we are again a couple more sneezes away from having x86-64 machines where booting linux is impracticable even for non-expert but reasonably savvy users users, akin to the smartphone and tablet scene (which is deplorable!!!).

It's not that I think it will happen... it probably won't... but it won't because someone will put their time and resources into fighting it and applying pressure on Microsoft to stop it from going too far... just like when UEFI was created, etc, etc

Linux is also not applying any of the best practices for ensuring users can boot in an equally easy and secure manner. With the vanilla kernels of almost all distros you can kexec to anything, your initramfs can be anything, modules can be non-signed, there's a lot of points of failure for SecureBoot in Linux as of now. Can you blame MS for not wanting to cripple its own signatures by allowing that to run with the shim? What is the point of using a verified boot if what you, with your own signatures, allow is a free-for-all. The real problem is there's no central authority that signs individual kernels and imposes the valid signatures on the UEFI standard.
Regarding whether it's practicable... Any user can choose to sacrifice SecureBoot and simply disable it, at least temporarily until they can load their own keys. Is disabling SecureBoot from the UEFI UI too hard for "non-expert but reasonably savvy users"?

[erniv2]

But the catch is that, always, ab-so-lute-ly always, VMs introduce overhead, specially in terms of memory. Hypervisors mitigate, but DO NOT eliminate that overhead.

You do that and now you have 1GB and 1-2 cores less to use in your Windows setup in the light case, yay!
And no, I've seen computers selling even now with less than 8GB RAM. Not everyone is full of cash

Yes there is overhead the virtualisation software needs to run like any other programm useing memory, and another bit of ram for the shadow page tables.

For the 2nd point yes the ram is used and gone damn now superfetch has less ram to rot in, unless you realy fire up a 64bit programm that is a memory hog, or have your chrome open with hundreds of tabs it doesn´t matter, the cpu cores are still there useable by the host system programs just have to share cpu time with so the ram point is true the cpu part not.

And i just gave my old PC that i used until april as example, it was allready 2nd hand when i got it and is allmost 10 years old now if you take the fx 8120 release date as example and it was still useable and still is, it´s sitting next to my desk right now just have to remove the dust and clean the cpu cooler and it would run without spending a cent. So no im not full of cash.