UEFI does not mean you need a network stack. Your dislike is of a particular implementation of the UEFI specification. The part of the spec that is being used i

UEFI does not mean you need a network stack. Your dislike is of a particular implementation of the UEFI specification. The part of the spec that is being used is the contract between the bootloader and operating system which gets loaded. There are a large number of benefits that come from standardizing this interface, and most of the drawbacks you perceive can be avoided depending on how vendors go about the implementation.