Microsoft aren't forcing Lenovo to block free operating systems

Re:Microsoft aren't forcing Lenovo to block free operating s... by seba_dos1 on Thursday September 22, 2016 @05:17AM (#12555572)

There is no real reason to write code that goes out of its way to prevent you from switching into AHCI mode even if you know what you're doing (like in EFI shell).

Hiding the option from BIOS menu is absolutely enough to "ensure Intel specific drivers are used for power management purposes". It would be annoying, but workaroundable. There is no real reason for anything more, aside of being able to get months of complains about not releasing a one line fix allowing your customers to use your hardware.

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Re:Microsoft aren't forcing Lenovo to block free operating s... by rlpb on Thursday September 22, 2016 @05:42AM (#12555677)

> Hiding the option from BIOS menu is absolutely enough to "ensure Intel specific drivers are used for power management purposes".

It absolutely is not enough, because I can come up with a single contrary case.

If this change was made in a BIOS update, simply hiding the option would leave some users stuck in the "wrong" setting forever. So one might write some code to flip it back at the same time.

This is the simplest way of fixing the problem. It doesn't need any assumption of maliciousness or incompetence. It's just unfortunate for Linux users, since they clearly didn't get any consideration when this fix was written, that's all.

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Re:Microsoft aren't forcing Lenovo to block free operating s... by seba_dos1 on Saturday September 24, 2016 @07:07AM (#12570452)

The change wasn't made in BIOS update, only newer physical models had this change applied and they shipped right away being blocked.

Aside of that, this couldn't even be a change made in BIOS update, because every OS installed earlier, including preinstalled Windows, would stop booting without being provided with Intel driver.

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