No, Linux won't be easy to run on a Microsoft Surface

http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/21189.html

by Garbage • 14 years ago

68 64 14 years ago

mjg59.dreamwidth.org

> Booting Linux on these devices would involve finding a flaw in the firmware and using that to run arbitrary code

Considering there hasn't been a major console (including xbox) that's been immune from crackers running arbitrary code, I'm pretty confident that we'll be seeing linux running on the surface at some point. Unfortunately the article's title is probably accurate; It's probably going to be too difficult for someone who's not a very-motivated linux fan to do it.

It's a shame too, when I first saw the surface my initial reaction was "Holy crap, if I can wipe it and put Arch on it it's the perfect mobile laptop replacement, I'll buy it for sure". Oh well, guess I'll have to wait to see how easy the jailbreak is.

mjg592• 14 years ago

Nobody's broken the AppleTV v3 yet, despite v2s going for well above original sale price on Ebay due to their hackability. Sometimes the difficulty/payoff ratio isn't sufficient for anyone to find a flaw.

(Or maybe everyone who could produce a jailbreak for the v3s is engaged in a lucrative business selling v2s on Ebay)

akavlie• 14 years ago

Thanks for letting us know! They're going for $164+ on Amazon.com (my selling venue of choice -- eBay is too much trouble).

Looks like I'll get an upgrade and extra cash for my v2, as I'm not interested in hacking.

Xuzz3• 14 years ago

The reason the Apple TV 3 hasn't been jailbroken is because it provides a tiny attack surface. There's no web browser to exploit, and there's no iTunes syncing. So even when exploits have been found in various parts of iOS, most of those parts either don't exist or inaccessible on the Apple TV.

jmspring• 14 years ago

I understand the desire to hack and tweak. That said, for my household, AppleTV is about the wife and I being able to watch Netflix, homeshare pictures and (more important) movies with minimal hassle.

Hadn't realized AppleTV v2 had a market. Tempted to upgrade and make some cash.

haberman• 14 years ago

A shame too, because AppleTV 3 is a beautiful piece of hardware. Would be the ideal tiny ARM server if only I could get Linux to run on it.

drivebyacct25• 14 years ago

Mmm, tell that to all the people who bought Motorola phones and told me off when I warned against it with the same logic. "It will be broken soon enough". To this day, it is not possible to boot alternative kernels on many moto devices, save for some sort of rebooter with kexec or because an engineering bootloader (signed of course) was leaked or it's one of the handful of devices that the Motorola unlock tool supports.

I'd love to be wrong, I promise you, but if MS has done their homework right and looked at what others have done, it ought to be close to possible. (Also note that the primary way of compromising the Xbox these days requires electrically glitching hardware. I suppose something similar could be devised for a targeted ARM device but it seems less likly given the cost/benefit that mjg referenced).

alayne• 14 years ago

Even if you got Linux to boot, would you have drivers for the hardware?

mjg592• 14 years ago

Probably. Microsoft's pushed hard to turn the ARM market into something closer to the PC one - Windows RT devices are required to have UEFI and ACPI, so device discovery is a solved problem. As far as the actual drivers go, the majority of the parts are almost certainly also present in at least one Android device on the market, and the touchscreen presumably uses the Microsoft multitouch protocol that's already supported by the Linux kernel.

The biggest hurdle you'd face is actually that Linux doesn't support ACPI or UEFI on ARM yet. I believe that Linaro are working on that, though.

zokier3• 14 years ago

PS3 was released in 2006, and finally broken in 2010 due key management issues (not a flaw in the firmware afaik). Do you really think that running Linux on Surface in 2016 will be relevant anymore? The device probably will be EOLed long before that.

kragen• 14 years ago

Until 2010 you could run Linux on the PS3 without breaking any kind of security, using the built-in "OtherOS" feature. On April 1, 2010, that feature was removed with a firmware update. I think it actually took until 2011 for a working jailbreak to be released.

Your overall point is correct, even if the PlayStation is not a good supporting argument.

jlgreco5• 14 years ago

At one point, after OtherOS was removed but before the keys were reverse engineered, there was some sort of "jailbreak" that used a bug in the PS3's USB stack.

tsahyt• 14 years ago

My initial reaction was essentially the same (give or take a distro). The lockdown is really a shame, since thus far this is the most attractive tablet I've seen, especially with the keyboard.

I'm pretty sure someone will be able to jailbreak it, though it might take some time. I think the whole secure-boot thing will work out somehow in the future. I'm not prepared to have my next PC locked down, keeping me from running the OS I want. Until then, I will quite simply not buy a new machine.

If I've learned anything about computer security in my life, it's that there is no such thing.

orionblastar2• 14 years ago

How about a Boycott of computer devices that you cannot install an alternative OS on like Linux?

This new Firmware is designed to keep Malware off PCs, but it also keeps competition to Windows off PCs as well. Time for another DOJ investigation of Microsoft for locking out competition?

w1ntermute• 14 years ago

> How about a Boycott of computer devices that you cannot install an alternative OS on like Linux?

You couldn't get most of HN to do something like this, let alone the general public.

sounds2• 14 years ago

Sad but true.

On the other hand, the average customer doesn't even want to go through the trouble of buying a device and then having to load the OS on it. Arguably it's a red herring to worry about the Surface. Let it succeed or fail. But you can be sure I won't buy one.

drivebyacct25• 14 years ago

The major linux distros boot out of the box on these non-ARM PCs, SecureBoot can enroll your own keys and/or can be disabled. So, what type of user is going to be prevented from trying or installing linux?

abrahamsen• 14 years ago

Microsoft is not the dominating player on the tablet or laptop hardware market, so I don't see any ground for an anti-trust investigation.

sown3• 14 years ago

I get the impression that in the future I'll be the old UNIX beard guy telling youngin-s and interns that one time I could just throw Gnu/Linux or BSD on just about whatever hardware.

sown3• 14 years ago

Or better yet, you could even write your own OS on new hardware and not have to get permission (or whatever it is we have to do in the future).

betterunix• 14 years ago

Write your own OS? How about writing software at all? The future will be a world where "consumer" computers will not be allowed to run software that was not approved by some corporation, and where programmers will have to pay an annual fee just to have the ability to program (which could be lost without notice and without any refund).

"Back in my day, we learned to program by just programming! I used to practice my programming skills on whatever computer I could get my hands on when I was your age...you kids will never understand how much the world has changed..."

rizzom5000• 14 years ago

This is one business decision I fail to fully comprehend.

First of all, the number of people interested in dual-boot or otherwise are likely to be small. But even so, why drive away potential customers and business? If the hardware is what people want, isn't it your goal, as a business, to give them the hardware; and to give your shareholders the profits from the sale of said hardware?

I don't see the win in a decision like this. It's a lose lose situation that could be a win win.

drivebyacct25• 14 years ago

Because they're subsidizing the cost of the hardware with the intention of creating lifetime or long term Windows users.

forgottenpaswrd2• 14 years ago

"I don't see the win in a decision like this. It's a lose lose situation that could be a win win."

Well, they want the alternatives to their product to be difficult to install so people remain in the Windows world or MS ecosystem.

When there is no alternative, there is a monopoly and you could raise your profits as much as you want, they will pay, econ 101.

Microsoft had been reaping a 90% and 95% margin from their Windows and MS Office products just because of their monopoly, and +30% in their global business(after spending billions on "me too" projects like bing, zune, winmo, lumia or xbox, witch lost billions before getting profitable).

joenathan• 14 years ago

There is no such thing as the Microsoft Surface, there is the Microsoft Surface RT(ARM) and the Microsoft Surface Pro(x86). The Surface RT, like most ARM devices(Android & iOS included) has a locked bootloader. The Surface Pro on the other hand will have the option to "unlock" the bootloader by disabling secure boot.

I do wish Microsoft would take the "high road" and offer the same option to disable secure boot on the Surface RT.

marshray• 14 years ago

Or retain secure boot with a method for a knowledgeable user to install an additional trusted master key.

Xuzz3• 14 years ago

This is no different than on the iPad. And as with the iPad, finding a security hole to work around the signature requirements is very simple compared to actually porting Linux. Indeed, as the Surface is a new product, I'd guess it might actually be much easier to find such a flaw than it has been on the iPad — which has had multiple such flaws discovered and exploited (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_jailbreaking#Recent_release...).

daeken• 14 years ago

There's an amazing lack of interest in Surface jailbreaking, though. I was running a Chip-in to pick up a Surface RT (primarily to gauge interest). Even with you, comex, and a bunch of other people retweeting it, it ended up getting a grand total of $80. And that was from a demographic that's deeply interested in such jailbreaks.

The likelihood of a device being broken is almost purely a function of interest; the interest just isn't there for the Surface, which is why the money I got is going to the EFF rather than buying a device (my contingency if the project didn't raise enough or raised too much).

Xuzz3• 14 years ago

There's just an amazing lack of interest in the Surface altogether — except, apparently, from the freedom groups still upset about Microsoft while mostly ignoring the rest of the industry.

jeswin2• 14 years ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that MS is doing the right thing by insisting that hardware makers give users a choice. Microsoft _requires_ that Windows 8 certified devices have an option to disable Secure Boot. They still get blamed though.

Surface RT doesn't have that option, because it is exactly like the iPad except that it is going to be far less popular. To be fair, if there is anyone to be blamed for this alarming trend of locking things down, it is Apple.

jacquesm2• 14 years ago

You can't really blame Apple for something Microsoft does. Microsoft is large enough to buck the trend.

jeswin2• 14 years ago

I am not blaming Apple for something Microsoft did. I am blaming them for making it acceptable to lock things down.

Toshio• 14 years ago

Apple and microsoft can do as they please with devices they manufacture themselves. Harming the consumer comes into play when microsoft removes choice from the market by dictating restricted boot to OEMs in exchange for better licensing deals.

ryukafalz• 14 years ago

You're right, that is the right thing to do. However, MS also mandates that secure boot be enabled with no option to disable it on certified Windows RT devices. That's essentially all future ARM-based Windows devices, not just Surface RT, and I suspect we'll be seeing more of those in years to come.

primitur• 14 years ago

I think the only way forward is for some manufacturer to step up and design hardware that will run Linux, yet be competitive with the features of Surface.

We're only worrying about this entire issue because the mass market, presumably, will adopt Surface - and thus Microsofts standard lockout policies - and thus 'all the cheap hardware wont be available to us'.

But, there is absolutely nothing stopping a hardware manufacturer from stepping up and saying - well, here's a laptop that is just as nice, but no lockout. Companies like Always-Innovating (shudder) have attempted it in the past - sure, its not easy, but it may be easier than getting Surface cracked, or the US/EU/Chinese Governments to apply anti-monopoly legislation to Microsoft/et al.

I know, its expensive to get this done properly, but if there is an opportunity here, its in the Hardware Startup realm. It is fraught with danger and problem at all fronts, but then again .. people said that the raspberry-pi project wouldn't work. They said it about the Open Pandora. They said it about Always Innovating. It really is just a matter of pushing harder, persisting through the storms, and I believe the market is there.

In fact, OpenPandora2 could very well be the solution to this entire dilemna. The OP guys have had a rough time of it, but they're still in the ring .. if only someone like Valve or so on would get a bit more muscle behind them, we'd see the OpenPandora2 (or whatever) step into the ring and start competing just fine, methinks ..

EDIT: Take a look at this thing and tell me its not a few small hardware-revisions away from being an ideal Surface competitor: http://www.openpandora.org/ It may well be 5 years behind the tech curve, but the damn thing works so well, and yet was created by VOLUNTEERS and PIONEERS who, indeed, have emerged from the Linux/OpenSource eco-sphere, under the radar of the mainstream to start actually delivering. I know, the numbers aren't there (they haven't hit 5000 users yet), but just imagine what it could be if a little more muscle were put behind this project from someone like Valve ..

lucian1900• 14 years ago

That's basically the Asus Transformer. Or some other Android tablet.

meaty• 14 years ago

Just don't buy one then even if you want one. Oh wait, that's exactly what people are doing already :)

orionblastar2• 14 years ago

People are buying them in big numbers because they don't know any better. Those buying the Windows RT device can't seem to figure out why it won't run their Legacy X86 Windows apps. There is a sucker born every minute, PT Barnum.

No, Linux won't be easy to run on a Microsoft Surface

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