Enjoy OSDev? Stay the hell away from Win8 if you do.

[flukiluke]

Don't know what you people are fussing about - Commodore 64, here I come...

[turdus]

Eventhough macs only have UEFI they still have the bootcamp option. Maybe it is time for Armv8 to rule the world.

You are wrong about that, Mac will boot any old BIOS way bootable disk like a charm if EFI loader fails. No bootcamp required, but the OS must support GPT. If it don't then you have to create a mirror MBR partition of GPT (that's what BootCamp do, but feel free to use fdisk).

About arm: are there any working armv8 cpus yet?!?

[Creature]

I wouldn't worry too much. The linux community has already published a document regarding Secure Boot and how to make it play nice with other operating systems. Also, I recall an article somewhere (can't remember where) stating that most mainboard vendors are planning to implement an "On/Off" switch for secure boot on their UEFI boards.

Apparently, Secure Boot has already been circumvented as well, at least according to that article.

I don't think (or "hope", may be a better word) they would be so "evil" as to leave all non-Windows users standing in the cold.

[SDS]

As much as Microsoft has a lot of clout and money in the industry, there are also significant vested commercial interests who have a stake in software such as linux and other open systems being able to run freely.

If it looks like they won't be able to, you can expect these organisations to kick up a fuss until a solution is found.

[Jezze]

I just realized that this topic assumes that people want to use Windows 8. Is this a proven fact?

[SDS]

No, it assumes that manufacturers will move to produce hardware which matches the specifications and requirements laid down by windows 8.

I think this is a reasonable assumption given past commercial behaviour of the manufacturers.