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Asus and Dell announce new mini PCs for Windows 365 | Goodbye local OS (www.notebookcheck.net)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 36 points 7 months ago (10 children)

Someone will install Linux on them and use them as a cheap barebones computer. I'm sure with a bit of jiggery-pokery they can be repurposed to something useful.

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  • [–] 14 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    You say that based on 30-40 years of companies not really knowing what they were doing, but we live in a world where hardware manufacturers ABSOLUTELY know how to make nearly unhackable, locked down hardware. Smartphones are already like this - if the manufacturer decides you don't get to install a custom OS, unless you're lucky enough for there to be an exploit, you don't get to. Same goes for game consoles. That knowledge can easily be applied to these to make these, if not completely unhackable, so unstable and inconvenient as to be almost the same.

    We are absolutely entering this nightmare phase.

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    I 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.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months 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.

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