This won't work because the firmware will write a file to your hard drive with the bloatware. It's scary that firmware will modify my filesystem - lots of damag

This won't work because the firmware will write a file to your hard drive with the bloatware. It's scary that firmware will modify my filesystem - lots of damage could happen here. Also, instead of step 2, it would make more sense to boot linux on a usb stick and use dd to erase the hard drive -- this is more complete than installing another OS... but still useless if the firmware is working against you.