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View Full Version : How do you tell if a computer has TPM?



vayu
January 13th, 2006, 08:20 AM
I want to buy a new computer, but I don't want TPM. I'm thinking I want a dual core Pentium M laptop and an AMD X2 desktop. Are such new designs bound to have a TPM chip installed?

mstlyevil
January 13th, 2006, 08:23 AM
I want to buy a new computer, but I don't want TPM. I'm thinking I want a dual core Pentium M laptop and an AMD X2 desktop. Are such new designs bound to have a TPM chip installed?

Probally not with Windows XP. TPM is something that is fully supported in Windows Vista and OSX. TPM is useless under Linux so a TPM chip will probally have no effect on Ubuntu users.

poofyhairguy
January 13th, 2006, 09:04 AM
I want to buy a new computer, but I don't want TPM. I'm thinking I want a dual core Pentium M laptop and an AMD X2 desktop. Are such new designs bound to have a TPM chip installed?

The X2 desktop won't. I checked before I bought mine.

No promises on the Intel- they are the leader in that area.

vayu
January 13th, 2006, 08:02 PM
The X2 desktop won't. I checked before I bought mine.

How did you check?


Off topic, do you have to sacrifice plugins like flash, quicktime, wmv and pdf viewers with the X2?

mstlyevil
January 13th, 2006, 08:13 PM
Off topic, do you have to sacrifice plugins like flash, quicktime, wmv and pdf viewers with the X2?

No, not at all. The X2 is A AMD Athlon 64 dual core processor. It will run any program or operating system that Intel will run because it is a full X86 compliant chip.

sudoMakeTea
June 23rd, 2009, 03:46 PM
Probally not with Windows XP. TPM is something that is fully supported in Windows Vista and OSX. TPM is useless under Linux so a TPM chip will probally have no effect on Ubuntu users.

This is an old thread but I have to comment as this thread shows up as one of the first few results on google. Your statement is (and was 3 years ago) patently false. The TPM is not fully supported under XP, Vista or OSX. However, there are open source projects that allow you to leverage the TPM's capabilities on Linux.

DouglasAWh
October 8th, 2009, 06:50 PM
How did you check?


This question seems to have gone un-answered and I'd like to know. :)

coldReactive
October 8th, 2009, 07:49 PM
The Wikipedia Article might help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Platform_Module

Bachstelze
October 8th, 2009, 08:06 PM
TPM is useless under Linux.

Where does that come from?

Xbehave
October 8th, 2009, 08:27 PM
Where does that come from?
TPM is to do with DRM and is pretty useless under linux (although you might be able to do some nice rootkit checks using it, but if somebody has a rootkit on your system them can just fudge the results so tbh it is pretty useless!)

Bachstelze
October 8th, 2009, 08:30 PM
TPM is to do with DRM

No. DRM is one of the possible applications of TPM, just like it is one of the possible applications of encryption. Is it the only one? No. Does that make encryption useless on Linux systems? Definitely not. Same goes for TPM.

Xbehave
October 8th, 2009, 09:00 PM
No. DRM is one of the possible applications of TPM, just like it is one of the possible applications of encryption. Is it the only one? No. Does that make encryption useless on Linux systems? Definitely not. Same goes for TPM.
OK, give one use of it on a linux system?
You can sign stuff, but unless you sign and check
1) your MBR
2) your bootloader
3) your kernel
it's not going to be any use!
AFAIK, no bios checks the MBR, no bios checks the bootloader and its hard to fit a keycheck algo in the MBR, no widespread bootloader (GRUB.GRUB2,LILO) can read a TPM chip or check the sig on the kernel. So i say again a TPM chip is next to usless under linux, sure you can use it but there is no reason to trust it above a kernel that already offers all of the TPMs features.

Warpnow
October 8th, 2009, 09:31 PM
...I don't think a dual core pentium M exists...

caxap
October 19th, 2011, 09:15 PM
Can I use TPM to encrypt data on my HDD?
Which software can I use?

sffvba[e0rt
October 19th, 2011, 09:17 PM
Back to sleep thread...


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