I can't know if you were serious but it should be obvious they can't answer for me. What is far less obvious is what good Secure Boot can possibly offer Slackware or Linux as a whole. Since Microsoft and Intel don't emphasize Linux (and who really can blame them?) it's unlikely any meaningful answer will be forthcoming. In the meantime I rely on "If it ain't broke, don't 'fix' it".

On the flip side we have entered an era where firmware is just software and can be attacked by malware underneath any OpSys. How much damage that can cause is largely OpSys dependent and is still to play out. How effective Secure Boot is in defense against such attacks, especially for Linux, is an ongoing battle.

That's why I ask the cost/benefit question.

They can't answer for you so you decided to ask some random dudes on the internet. Fine.

I don't know what do you expect from them but Intel contributes a lot of code to Linux, see https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux...ee/MAINTAINERS or LKML.

I want to make it work at all, not fix it. According to https://www.howtogeek.com/116569/htg...ans-for-linux:

And someone in this thread has already come across a computer on which Secure Boot cannot be disabled https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...7/#post6165463

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/contactus
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us...t-support.html
https://www.asus.com/us/support/callus

I thought I had a similar issue to ZhaoLin1457 with not being able to disable secure boot on a laptop. I emailed the manufacturer, and they said that you needed to first create a bios password. Having done this, and restarting, the bios option to disable secureboot appeared!. After disabling it, i could clear the bios password I had temporarily added, and hey-presto! secure-boot disabled, and I could set up dual boot with slackware without having to go through all the hoops described.

2 members found this post helpful.

What laptop model do you have?

I own and provision x86_64 and arm64 devices, both which have secure-boot (mainline u-boot can store secure-boot-keys); linux kernel can uefi boot with efi_boot_stub configured... so one way to configure booting that works everywhere is handy, though not profitable, per se.

I fixed an apple guy's imac's time machine's mess: I put my portable ssd with slackware64 on it, (which has /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.efi), and held the option key during startup, and behold, the portable ssd was available, and I was able to run his imac on my ssd, then mount his imac's internal drive, and use rsync to merge all the copies of copies inside itself that his time machine setup had created... he was really grateful and gave me some bucks (profit). If he had had a secure-boot computer, it would have been more challenging, as this thread discloses, and I would have missed out.

Having a portable slackware installation that can boot a customer's secure-boot device leads to profit! Even though, from a security point of view, secure-boot might not have helped slackware or linux--in fact it created a hindrance by needing more work to make it work--nevertheless, having a secure-boot equipped slackware allows access to those devices that would otherwise be hindered, and that access can be profitable!

1 members found this post helpful.

The question originally posed was in the title: "Start Slackware installer without disabling UEFI Secure Boot first?", positing also subsequently the possibility of having a computer on which it cannot be disabled (which is indeed possible with Windows 10 onwards).

If you cannot answer that question why not be silent rather than trying to take the thread over for your own purposes. Stating your highly predictable views on a different question, namely whether secure boot is a Microsoft conspiracy ("Armed Robbery" as you put it) or has an adequate cost/benefit ratio, might be acceptable if done once, but to keep going on and on I don't think is.

It is a shame when someone tries to turn a technical discussion into yet another twitter-style righteousness war.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks slac-in-the-box. I concur about portable Slackware installs as a great investment. However I still get the strong impression that Secure Boot is like offering a new car with the salient feature that it requires two sets of keys to start it.

@ZhaoLin

I also would like to know so that I can avoid
this brand of laptop and circumvent their sordid plot of entrapment.
谢谢您的配合.