Fair points. I'll accept the F2 interface only working on a standard keyboard with a basic monitor port and a restricted selection of USB devices. Needing to us

Fair points. I'll accept the F2 interface only working on a standard keyboard with a basic monitor port and a restricted selection of USB devices. Needing to use it at all is an exceptional case that only techies need understand. Sound, fancy graphics, mouse, disk encryption. These can all be delegated to the OS loaded from the hard disk. You don't need any of these in the BIOS. The reason for wanting a simple BIOS is so it can be protected from being modified by malware. That's the prize. I'm not saying there won't be costs, but I think the benefits outweigh them significantly. I've had my desktop machine for something like five years and its worked fine without ever needing a BIOS update. It can boot up a live-USB copy of Linux quite happily, but if I ever add a set of future-USB ports that the BIOS doesn't know about, I'll have to be content to using the old USB ports on the motherboard just to get the alt-OS started.