From a UEFI/BIOS dev standpoint, it's the other way around: Windows' requirements are the minority compared to Linux's requirements. Linux is actually pretty much catered to by default without the software dev having to do anything special to get it to boot. Windows is the picky one, so I have a hard time believing that they didn't know what they were doing when they "accidentally" made it so Linux won't boot.

Not that I'm against spreading awareness about the privacy/security concerns that come along with constant tracking like this, but how is this news exactly? Google Play Services has always been bad about destroying my battery's charge because of its constant need to know my location, among other things, and it always broke whenever I tried to deny it permissions so I was just forced to turn off location globally in the settings anyway. Perhaps the experience was different for others, but if you're truly concerned about it, install an aftermarket OS without Gapps. At least Google provides access to the data it collects about you and offers a way to supposedly delete it, as opposed to companies like Microsoft that use malware tactics to trick you into providing it and then don't give you a way to delete it, at least that I'm aware of.

UEFI doesn't have anything to do with what OS you can install and run (aside from compatibility issues one might encounter when trying to run legacy software). If you're thinking of things like Intel Boot Guard or UEFI Secure Boot, those are meant to prevent modification to the firmware image stored on the motherboard's ROM chip, not lock down the OS. The only way to restrict what OS you can load would be to add in very specific code outside the scope of the UEFI spec that probes the boot media and says yay or nay to different OSes. Basically, Intel, UEFI/BIOS devs, and motherboard manufacturers would all have to conspire together against Linux and I think they all know it would not be in their best interests to do so, given that so much of the IT infrastructure and technical community of the world runs it. This is Microsoft just trying to suck in even more people to Malware 10. There aren't even any real differences between the Skylake chips already out there and the Kaby Lake chips according to several articles I've seen. The difference in driver code (which is ostensibly the reason for the lack of support) would essentially be the difference of a #defined version number, not any actual implementation differences.