>>7EFI is bloated, but there aren't any better alternatives. The Linux native bootloader interface is
not cleaner by any stretch of the imagination - it's mostly a pile of undocumented hacks accreted to support various BIOS limitations. And as for BIOS -
>>21The IBM "compatible" BIOS is an awful pile of historical kludges with countless limitations that appear arbitrary if you aren't intimately familiar with its twisted history. If you are writing 16 bit BIOS code you are literally coding for a dead architecture; the rest of the world has moved on to 32 bit or even 64 bit clean code and what remains over in BIOS land has developed unbelievable rot.
It is unfortunate that the base EFI specification contains so much inessential cruft - it would be nice if an industry group would prune it down to just the essential boot loading and configuration interfaces, but it'll probably never happen. In practice, the bare minimum is defined by what Microsoft uses, and sadly includes such awfulness as firmware graphics, HID, and ACPI.