That's not true any more. That's the news. People will install Linux on their laptops, find out that hibernation isn't working because of the so-called Secure Boot restrictions, get angry, and just give up Linux and go back to Windows and its world of post-boot malware.

Impossible, no machine could ever be sold without the capability to boot from an external device, as this would prevent installing Microsoft Windows on it.

Actually, what we have seen is that people saw the so-called Secure Boot as the unuseful and harmful thing that it is, and a limited number of Microsoft supporters labeled them as hysterical idiots pointing at the fact that it could always be disabled. Well, now it's no longer true, as widely expected by the hysterical idiots.

Leaving aside the fact that "leaving the onus on the OEM" already is an anti-competitive, anti-consumer and anti-free software behaviour, since you are less malicious than me, can you give a non-malicious explanation about why the requirement of being able to disable the so-called Secure Boot is being lifted now? What problem are MS trying to solve? The rising wave of hypno-malware that induces users to enter the firmware setup utility on their machines and disable boot restrictions?

What happens when your PC is restricted by the so-called Secure Boot scheme is well known. The problem we're discussing here is the potential impossibility to disable it induced by Microsoft into future computers.

Certainly I can't tell you about specific negative effects from the so-called Secure Boot, since the lack of a way to disable it is a proposed feature of Windows 10 which, as you certainly know, hasn't hit the markets yet. I could tell you about the large amounts of malware that I have had to remove so far from Windows 8.1 update 1 machines notwithstanding their so-called Secure Boot feature in place, but I suspect that wouldn't be the kind of story that you want to hear. As for pointing fingers, when somebody gets eaten by a lion, I don't point the finger to the lion, but to the person who opened its cage. Bear with me.

What's my complaint, you ask. My complaint, I'm sorry if it wasn't clear, is not being able to install the software that I want on the PC that I own. Everyone around here has understood perfectly what's going on: the so-called Secure Boot adds no security on a system where the user is able to install third-party software (or his own) and therefore it is merely an obstacle put in place by Microsoft (not the UEFI forum, not the OEMs, not anyone else) to make it harder for end users to replace Windows with something else. Being upset for this is not an "emotional problem against Microsoft", it is a very pragmatic stance. If anything, if you want to see something emotional, it's calling a company which behaves this way as "the new Microsoft that supports Linux", which is the reason I bothered to write my original comment. And that's, of course, a perfectly acceptable emotional behaviour; we'd be robots without emotions. A less laudable kind of emotional behaviour is making personal attacks about the richness of my vocabulary. Yes, my English skills are limited. But being able to master a wider portion of the English language won't help me when I get a blinking cursor because I tried to remove Windows, or because a malware has modified some image measured by the so-called Secure Boot infrastructure.

If I buy hardware with so-called SecureBoot, in any form, it's because Microsoft forced the OEM to implement it. Don't make it look like Secure Boot was a misfortune fallen from the sky.

This is unacceptable for so many reasons, do I really need to enumerate them all, once again? We've already gone through this when the "new" Microsoft forced on the OEMs (and therefore the users) the so-called Secure Boot restriction for Windows 8; back then all Microsoft supporters claimed that it wasn't a big deal precisely because there was the warranty of being able to disable it.

They are removing from users the choice of installing an operating system other than Windows on their hardware of choice.

Of misdirected, here, is your failure to comprehend the implications of removing in general the ability to install an operating system other than Windows on the PC architecture. For competition in general, and in particular for an operating system which is developed by end users who install it on their home PCs.

The all new Microsoft that, as expected, is conspiring to lock Linux out of people's computers by means of the so-called SecureBoot?

Unions lobby the government to make them pass laws that make your work life more enjoyable even if you don't belong to one. This is needed to counter balance the lobbying power of the employers. For example, if fire breaks out at the place where you work, most probably you'll find fire extinguishers and emergency exits, and this fact is not due to your employer's benevolence or your professionality: your employer would be compelled by market forces to make you work in a dangerous place, if there weren't laws in place preventing malevolent employers from competing with him.

You don't need to be a communist to actually believe in the role of unions: the IMF, certainly not a lair of leftists, found out that inequality and poverty rise when the power of unions falls.

Hello, English learner here, what about the case of a sentence that *was* true in the past (not "might have been true" as the GP suggests)?

"If I was fooled, that's because I wasn't careful enough."

"If I were fooled, I'd be sorry now."

Actually, in Europe (at least where I live) we do study British English in schools. But then people learn American English because of America's cultural supremacy.