I've been hearing hysteria about "Microsoft is going to block people from booting Linux!" since like 2005. They don't even do it on their own line of hardware. If they wanted to do it, they would have by now.

They removed the requirement of Secure Boot being deactivable from OEM requirements.

When was that ever a requirement?

Surface models running Windows RT (windows on arm) had locked secure boot where you couldn't replace the master keys.

"Surface RT" / "Windows RT" was never intended to be sold by other OEMs though.

Out of curiousity, is WinRT / SurfaceRT sold at all anymore?

I thought that died and got buried a while back.

* “Windows RT” - no. That’s now normal Windows 10 for ARM, now devoid of that arbitrary restrictions present in “Windows RT” (“Windows: Really Terrible”).

* “WinRT” - yes. That’s the new COM+WinMD platform API added in Windows 8 (and initially only available to “Windows Store apps”) and incrementally improved since then and now part of UWP but it’s existence is weird. Some parts of WinRT are available outside of UWP but it’s a confusing mess.

* “Surface RT” - Yes, the “Surface 2” and then the “Surface Pro X”. Note that the Surface RT and Surface 2 were both locked-down to only run Windows App Store programs whereas the Pro X (and all post-Win10 ARM machines) are not artificially restricted this way.

There was the requirement for x86, by Microsoft, during the Windows 8 times, that Secure Boot to be possible to deactivate in the BIOS. That is no longer the case. https://www.techspot.com/news/60132-microsoft-leaving-option...

It is I think possible but not very likely