Windows 8 OEM specs may block Linux booting
I doubt any major vendor will do this.  First off, they don't want to be locked into selling Microsoft-only machines.  If they can't pretend Linux is an option, Microsoft can charge them $1000 for a Windows license and there's nothing they can do about it.  If they have Linux hanging over Microsoft's head, though, they'll get better pricing on Windows.  (Think this won't happen?  It already did with XP on netbooks.  When Microsoft realized that everyone was happy to get $100 off the price of their laptop to run Firefox under Linux instead of under Windows, they had no choice but to make it nearly free.)If that doesn't work, the need for booting non-standard Windows images will save us.  I've never worked for any company that ran a stock Windows install -- everyone rolls their own.  If new machines won't boot this image, guess what, that new machine is bought from some vendor that doesn't do this to them.  And the only reason most people use Windows at home is because they use Windows at work.  If big companies started migrating away from Windows, Microsoft could be in serious trouble.  (Yup, Microsoft Word is much nicer than LibreOffice Writer or AbiWord.  But you don't know that if you've never used it.  Or, you don't care, because you're writing a memo, not a book.  And that's $600 Microsoft loses right there.)Next, we're forgetting the all-important server market.  Nobody uses Windows as a server OS, so all those servers are going to have to be able to run Grub.  Since servers are what make the OEMs money (they actually need that quad core chip, you don't), keeping users of that market happy will be the hardware companies' biggest concern.  If Intel chips stop booting Linux, guess what, AMD is the new king of the market.Finally, many of these companies are in markets other than consumer computers, and they won't want to alienate their other partners.  If, say, Samsung says "our hardware will only run Windows", then they won't be manufacturing Android phones or Chromebooks anymore.  And that's a big deal, because they won't be manufacturing iPhones either, and that means they're out of the mobile market.  (Have you ever seen anyone without MVP certification anywhere near a Windows Phone?  I didn't think so.)Basically, Windows is important, but not so important that anyone would want to be the first to go Windows-only in hardware.  Hardware companies want to provide nice computers at a nice price.  End users mostly want to browse the web.  This puts Microsoft in a position to do exactly what the market wants, not what it thinks it can bear.  When you're at the top, the only place to go is down.  And that is where Microsoft is going.