At the heart of the problem, of course, is that Windows 8 hardware will come with Secure Boot enabled in the , meaning that only operating systems with an appropriate digital signature will be able to boot.

Distributions including , Fedora, and have all described their own plans for working around the problem, which has been the focus of much attention from the as well. In July, meanwhile, James Bottomley, chair of the Linux Foundation's Technical Advisory Board, among Linux developers to brainstorm solutions to the problem.

Now, it appears we're seeing the fruit of their labors.

"In a nutshell, the Linux Foundation will obtain a Microsoft Key and sign a small pre-bootloader which will, in turn, chain load (without any form of signature check) a predesignated boot loader which will, in turn, boot Linux (or any other operating system)," explained Bottomley in yesterday's official .