[orblivion]

I thought you need the microcode to boot. How can you function in a non-free OS? And I guess non-free people will have these bugs now?

Also, I have basic Ubuntu. I'm running `apt list --installed` and I don't have the microcode package in the list. Does that command not list dependencies, or am I just missing it?

[chungy]

The CPU has a built-in baseline microcode that it uses on every boot (runtime microcode updates are not persistent), OSes don't need to necessarily update it, but they can.