Worse Than Racism in Latest Ubuntu: Digital Restrictions (DRM) and Trusted Platform Module (TPM) Junk
Russian controversy ought not be the biggest one
THE new version of Ubuntu has come out and a major gaffe caused its withdrawal. To quote Borisov: "Due to an oversight, the Ubuntu 23.10 “Mantic Minotaur” desktop version installer was allowed to include phrases containing hate speech with obscene messages that had nothing to do with the installation process."
But the official release message also contained information about obscene technical things, notably "encryption keys are stored in the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) and recovered automatically by authenticated boot software."
This is not about real security, it's like 'secure' (restricted and controlled by Microsoft) boot. In recent years Canonical kept advertising Microsoft antifeatures in its release notes and even in the installer.
We wrote about this pattern at Techrights earlier this year [1, 2, 3, 4] and last year. Frankly it had already begun years earlier if not decades earlier or 17 years ago. █