For security, the new pre-bootloader will employ a "present user" test "to ensure that it cannot be used as a vector for any type of UEFI malware to target secure systems," Bottomley noted.

Source code for the pre-bootloader is now .

Once the Linux Foundation gets a Microsoft signature--something that "will take a while," Bottomley admits--the pre-bootloader will be placed on the Linux Foundation website, where anyone can download and use it to boot a CD/DVD installer or LiveCD , or to boot an installed operating system in secure mode for any distribution.

In essence, the new pre-bootloader will be "a stop-gap measure that will give all distributions time to come up with plans that take advantage of UEFI secure boot," Bottomley concluded.

Still, it's worth noting that Red Hat's Garrett published to the news following the Linux Foundation's announcement: "It's less useful than shim," he wrote, referring to the method used in Fedora's approach. "Just use shim instead."