[minusLik]

> “Why”? What kind of question is “why”?

Because low-level applications like this were promised when UEFI was introduced, that's why. UEFI's creators went even as far as to dream of replacing the Linux-based Internet-only mini-OSes of some vendors which could be accessed by pressing a certain key during boot (though I don't remember what they were called).

[pests]

Those were the quick view / quick boot festures that old Dell and the likes had. Usually booting into some bars ones productivity apps.

I did see a video on YT that did a deep dive into this. I beleive you are correct they were originally stripped down Linux or other custom OSes but then eventually switching to UEFI apps before falling okay of favor.

[jwoglom]

I think this might be the video you're talking about, in case anyone is also interested in a brief history of quick boot operating systems and UEFI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssob-7sGVWs