> will this allow hardware vendors additional means to prevent me from installing Linux?

No. Pluton serves as an on-chip secure enclave for encryption keys and the like. This is unrelated to installing operating systems.

Will the final purchaser of the computer chip, i.e., the consumer, have r/w access to the contents of the enclave?

EDIT: s/access/r\/w & to the contents of/

I don't know. I can't even speculate without knowing what you mean by "access to the enclave".

If you mean access as in being able to arbitrarily read and write keys or data to/from it, then no, you won't be able to access it that way. After all that's the whole point - even physical access to the hardware won't enable you to extract information (keys, etc.) from it.

This means any data or firmware stored on the chip by Microsoft or any OEM (e.g. firmware encryption keys or device signatures) won't be accessible to consumers.

TPMs define interfaces, though that allow programs to access its capabilities, so there are ways to interact with the hardware (and those are documented as well so you can write applications or operating systems that support it).

To get an idea what the interface looks like, you can check out the documentation of the Windows API: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/secprov/win32...

There's also a list of some TPM commands available on the same site: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/secprov/addbl...

Oh silly you, of course not.

Technically hardware vendors can already prevent this since years (secure boot without custom keys and only including Microsoft Windows keys).