Not sure I agree with you, given the facts surrounding the ordeal (SOMETHING prompted Lenovo to release this BIOS update, after all).
Now the edited title ("Linux Only BIOS Update") is much more confusing, judging by everybody else's comments. The BIOS isn't actually Linux only either; Windows runs just fine on it.
OH, I just realized you probably saw the post-edit title "Linux Only BIOS Update" which I agree with you IS very editorialized (it was copied and pasted from Lenovo's page that was linked by OP).
Context (looks like my more descriptive title was edited and shortened):
Lenovo's consumer ultrabooks have Intel RAID controllers that are BIOS locked into a proprietary single-drive RAID ("fake RAID") mode, we confirmed this through REing:
Linux does not support Intel's new proprietary single-drive RAID mode; many users were upset when they purchased these new Yoga ultrabooks and found out that they could not install Linux on them -- Linux would not detect the drive at all, despite all sorts of effort.
The Intel RAID controllers DO support backwards-compatible AHCI and NVMe modes, usually you can change this in the BIOS (on almost ALL PCs, that is the case).
Lenovo initially promised a BIOS update to add the setting back in, but kept stalling.
After several months, community members reverse engineered Lenovo's BIOS and found that had Lenovo added a single if/goto statement to the OEM BIOS source code that jmp'd out of the code that displayed the setting: Lenovo's BIOS was modified to intentionally remove the SATA controller mode setting.
Another user JTAG flashed their BIOS themselves with a patch to re-enable the SATA controller setting. After changing the drive back out of RAID mode, said user confirmed and showed proof that Linux booted, installed, and otherwise worked fine.
One user asked a Lenovo Rep about installing Linux, and he/she responded, "This system has a Signature Edition of Windows 10 Home installed. It is locked per our agreement with Microsoft."
Forum members and Redditors got (understandably) angry.
Lenovo started mass releasing PR damage control to the press within 24 hours, pointing the finger at such malarkey as their advanced hinge design, the huge risk they took using a bleeding edge Intel controller, Intel not providing Linux drivers for their new hardware, battery life degrading if a user switches out of fake RAID on Windows, Linux RAID mode being inferior to Windows and incapable of supporting crazy new Intel hardware (which warranted a thorough technical rebuttal from none other than developer of Linux RAID himself, Alan Cox), etc.
Microsoft released a statement as well saying they don't block Linux on Windows 10 Signature Edition PCs.
Lenovo started moderating and censoring their forums heavily, deleting many posts (including the multi-paged BIOS discussion with the REing), still no BIOS update, plenty of (still) angry users purchasing the laptop, learning the hard way it does not support Linux, and (in some cases) being unable to return it to the store or Lenovo.
TODAY: Lenovo backed down from their position of refusing to release a BIOS update this morning. They published BIOS updates with the SATA setting enabled.
I think the note that "This BIOS is NOT intended for use with machines running a Windows operation system" is rather telling. People saw the Lenovo BIOS issue as an anti-Linux move, but really I think it's an anti-Windows 7 move.
Team member: "boss man, we screwed up. let's enable some of our customers to get a quick fix!"
Boss: "Hmm, ok, sure patch looks good QA team will have them ship shape in 7 weeks once we redo WHQL testing"
Team member: "boss this only benefits our linux customers so we don't need to do WHQL"
Boss: "hmm we don't have a linux test suite so QA says that there was no regression with this new release. Good job! Just don't let any of our windows customers use this release. You can tell g3ntoo04 that he can have this BIOS update but don't put it on the support website."
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 30.6 ms ] threadNow the edited title ("Linux Only BIOS Update") is much more confusing, judging by everybody else's comments. The BIOS isn't actually Linux only either; Windows runs just fine on it.
Thus the "linux only" label.
What's the context?
Edit:
https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Linux-Discussion/Yoga-900-13ISK...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/09/21/lenovo_denies_plot_w...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/10/28/lenovo_downward_dogs...
Lenovo's consumer ultrabooks have Intel RAID controllers that are BIOS locked into a proprietary single-drive RAID ("fake RAID") mode, we confirmed this through REing:
Linux does not support Intel's new proprietary single-drive RAID mode; many users were upset when they purchased these new Yoga ultrabooks and found out that they could not install Linux on them -- Linux would not detect the drive at all, despite all sorts of effort.
The Intel RAID controllers DO support backwards-compatible AHCI and NVMe modes, usually you can change this in the BIOS (on almost ALL PCs, that is the case).
Lenovo initially promised a BIOS update to add the setting back in, but kept stalling.
After several months, community members reverse engineered Lenovo's BIOS and found that had Lenovo added a single if/goto statement to the OEM BIOS source code that jmp'd out of the code that displayed the setting: Lenovo's BIOS was modified to intentionally remove the SATA controller mode setting.
Another user JTAG flashed their BIOS themselves with a patch to re-enable the SATA controller setting. After changing the drive back out of RAID mode, said user confirmed and showed proof that Linux booted, installed, and otherwise worked fine.
One user asked a Lenovo Rep about installing Linux, and he/she responded, "This system has a Signature Edition of Windows 10 Home installed. It is locked per our agreement with Microsoft."
Forum members and Redditors got (understandably) angry.
Lenovo started mass releasing PR damage control to the press within 24 hours, pointing the finger at such malarkey as their advanced hinge design, the huge risk they took using a bleeding edge Intel controller, Intel not providing Linux drivers for their new hardware, battery life degrading if a user switches out of fake RAID on Windows, Linux RAID mode being inferior to Windows and incapable of supporting crazy new Intel hardware (which warranted a thorough technical rebuttal from none other than developer of Linux RAID himself, Alan Cox), etc.
Microsoft released a statement as well saying they don't block Linux on Windows 10 Signature Edition PCs.
Lenovo started moderating and censoring their forums heavily, deleting many posts (including the multi-paged BIOS discussion with the REing), still no BIOS update, plenty of (still) angry users purchasing the laptop, learning the hard way it does not support Linux, and (in some cases) being unable to return it to the store or Lenovo.
TODAY: Lenovo backed down from their position of refusing to release a BIOS update this morning. They published BIOS updates with the SATA setting enabled.
Team member: "boss man, we screwed up. let's enable some of our customers to get a quick fix!"
Boss: "Hmm, ok, sure patch looks good QA team will have them ship shape in 7 weeks once we redo WHQL testing"
Team member: "boss this only benefits our linux customers so we don't need to do WHQL"
Boss: "hmm we don't have a linux test suite so QA says that there was no regression with this new release. Good job! Just don't let any of our windows customers use this release. You can tell g3ntoo04 that he can have this BIOS update but don't put it on the support website."