The option of having a full auth trust chain would be nice for some security applications, but the implication that it could be made compulsory is terrifying.
this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2026
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It’s Linux. In what world do you imagine there wouldn’t be 87 forks that went in a different direction.
Linux cannot be controlled, at least as it stands today.
When Linux disappears I have some fears. But jerk as he may be, he’s also incredibly effective at keeping it open.
I don't trust Microsoft, why should I start trusting IBM/Canonical or Poettering now.
If the possibility is there they will happily lock you out of your own hardware.
I've made other comments before about how we used to cheer for Google back in the 00's because they were the upstart that took on the entrenched competitors (Microsoft primarily). Look what Google has become today - the very thing we hoped they would destroy, and they are so much worse about it.
Red Hat/IBM ultimately owned by the same people as Google: shareholders. Nothing will ever stand in the way of their greed. If this technology is allowed to exist, there's no reason to think that it too will be used against our interests.
Who decides what SecureBoot considers trustworthy? If SecureBoot is controlled by someone else then it can be used against the user. The aversion to SecureBoot is justified.
Secureboot uses certificates to verify integrity. The user is able to install new certificates. So I'd say it is the user? I'm not an expert though and their may be hardware out there that doesn't allow new certificates.
Can't say it's obvious how to change certificates on my motherboard. Just updated the BIOS and had to turn off SecureBoot so it could boot into my Linux install (MSI B450 Tomahawk Max).
The user is able to install new certificates.
That's true today, but there's no guarantee it will be true in the future. Google is already pushing for all software running on Android to be cryptographically verified and they (Google) are the only ones that control the signing keys. This means that they intend to kill off F-droid and all other software delivered outside the Google store.
If Google is able to pull it off on Android, everyone else will try to do it on desktop OSes too - Linux included.
That's right. The user (or administrator if it's a work machine) installs or removes acceptable certificates into firmware database. Typically a device you buy in the past 15 years or so comes with Microsoft certificates preinstalled, but it doesn't have to stay like that.
It's configurable.
I forgot already but doesn't he work for MSFT now?
I swear the moment he got a new job is when he came out with run0
He was there for a brief period. According to Wikipedia he was there from 2022-2026 and seems to have left to create his new company in early 2026.
Anyway, somebody working for Microsoft isn't proof positive that they share the values of Microsoft (unless you're in upper admin); you're not guilty by association. People generally need to work to eat in this capitalist hellscape, and FOSS doesn't tend to pay well.
In the comments they clarify that is mostly targeted at servers and IoT first. In the enterprise world attestation is absolutely needed. And on personal devices? I'd be very happy if I had a secure boot chain for full disk encryption working out of the box. At least for portable devices...
I wonder if this would allow an anti-cheat system to get acceptable trust of a system without having to access ring 0.
Of course, we'd then need the OS / kernel images to be signed. I think most gamers run stock kernels anyway.
I just don't want see the garbage that is the Android Play Store where apps refuse to run because we run an OS that isn't profitable to Google.
I just don’t want see the garbage that is the Android Play Store where apps refuse to run because we run an OS that isn’t profitable to Google.
I think the possibility that this could happen is dangerously high.
Everything starts with good intentions. Everything ultimately leads to locking end users out of their personal freedoms.
Everything starts with good intentions.
No it doesn't.
When it comes to privacy, politics, and capitalism, almost nothing starts with good intentions.
Most everything starts for the short term benefit of whoever starts it and any investors putting money into it, at the expense of everyone else and ignoring any future negative consequences unless profit can be extracted from them.
It hurting people the starter doesn't like (even if it will come back to hurt the starter in the long time) is also a very important factor, though secondary to the short term profit one.
Since the user is the one doing the cheating, most likely no, unfortunately.
This is needed. Servers need it, and it would be a nice feature to enable for personal systems. We would need to be able to build our own images with our own keys to really make this worthwhile. Especially with programs in my bin dir I’ve compiled or downloaded.
Do I trust Lennart to not do something asinine to turn this into a shit show? I do not. This would be better if it was someone who has security experience and system design cred.
I can't imagine anyone sane would hold onto the belief that it will remain just "a nice feature to enable" after looking at the historical encroachment of commercial interests in mobile phone boot chain setups. I tell you the truth that after widespread adoption this WILL turn into a "not nice feature that you cannot disable", and you can forget about enrolling your own keys as well.
Secureboot is worthless if the Microsoft keys are still enabled. It should only allow code that you sign yourself to boot.
Because if there's one thing Linux users think about their systems .. it's "hey why does this thing let me do what I want?"
There’s a universe of difference between changes you intended to make in your system, and changes you didn’t intend because a state actor attacked you based on your social media criticism.
Unlike with closed source software, you can always decide you don’t want your software to be secure.
What you should be worried about is not software but hardware.
Uhhhh...wha?
This would be a big deal for hardware manufacturers or product manufacturers in securing their devices. Only a tiny, tiny fraction of Linux users are just desktop jockeys.
I was referring to this
If this technology is successful, the end result could be that we would see our Linux laptops one day being as locked down as an Iphone or Android device.
What if the thing that you want is to have SecureBoot-enforced hardware attestation?
What if it was just an off the cuff joke?
This is too many dependent probabilities
That would be beneficial to users as well. I'm not understanding the downside here.
I guess you're not thinking of "locked down" in terms of independent developers finding the iOS and Android "play by our rules and be distributed thru our app store or we'll make it hard for users to run your software" to be a barrier to distribution.
Bruh...that's not even the point of the company or what he's talking about. You're being paranoid, first off.
Second, you want secure devices? You can't have that right now with Linux very easily. There is no chain of trust coming from the hardware aside from TPM, which is kind of a joke. This guy wants to make a standard way of certifying a chain of trust which would allow an ecosystem of devices to maintain some semblance of trust amongst itself and other devices. This would make things like networks, edge devices, forward deployed hardware, and running sensitive data in less than secure locations more secure.
Last, if you're going to be paranoid, at least educate yourself on the subject. Not a single person who is even vaguely familiar with what this entails is thinking "Oh they're going to lock all our devices rawrawrawr". That's just ridiculous. That could happen now, but...you seeing that out in the components world anywhere? Absolutely not. Because it's no desirable, and that's NOT WHAT HES EVEN TALKING ABOUT.
🤦
Sorry but this whole thing is just snake-oil.
You can verify and sign your whole trust chain down to the last shared library and it doesn't matter when you don't know what the binary blobs on your TPM / CPU / BIOS / NIC are doing.
The only guarantee to a secure system is openness an all of that signing won't help you there.
Right, so because of your limited knowledge and understanding of what the actual needs of an entire industry are, it's all snake oil. Cool.
Meanwhile I'd just love a way to box up a custom machine, use something what he's building, ship it to site, and have it run without issue and have some piece of mind a competitor didn't try to gank the data over USB, or bypass the identity of the motherboard that SHOULD have boot blocks in place, or maybe someone just rips the SSD right out of it and tries to boot it elsewhere.
Fuck the rest of ALL that and the practical needs of security experts and system builders because YOU are worried that it somehow magically it's used for all kinds of other nefarious things.
Cool. Cool.
Only being able to install "allowed" apps is not great for freedom.
Not even how that works FFS. You're not the target audience here.
Y'all really need to start reading more about things before jumping to ridiculously uninformed conclusions and making comments. My gosh.
Amutable are a gaggle of fucks