Comment on Asus and Dell announce new mini PCs for Windows 365 | Goodbye local OS
terrific@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week agoI don’t know, I don’t share your pessimism. In my personal experience, most hardware isn’t unhackable. Apart from iPhone / iPad (where hardware and software are non-standard, and also made by the same vendor) I struggle to find any examples.
I have installed Linux many times on Chromebooks, where there is some BIOS module that checks for OS “authenticity”, but that can be disabled. I have flashed ROMs on android devices many times too. It’s sometimes a bit inconvenient, but nothing remotely close to impossible.
mycodesucks@lemmy.world 1 week ago
That BIOS feature can be disabled… now. But there’s nothing keeping a manufacturer from just not providing that functionality, and requiring only signed firmware updates. Now the machine is more or less locked down.
The fact it can be disabled now is a convenience feature based on historical availability, but that’s absolutely no guarantee it will continue to be there in the future.