kamyl

No, just an intermediate kernel is written into flash memory along with coreboot. It doesn't wear little flash chip as it doesn't write anything which needs to persist, that's actually one of the points of this solution. Its sole role is to chain-load your destination kernel. So you just basically move your bootloader into non trivially writable memory (as it can be write-locked) to make it more tamper proof. There is always a risk of bricking your system if you're not careful, but wearing off flash isn't one of those risks if that's the concern.

If you're lucky and your machine supports coreboot there is even better way to boot into linux - use slimmed down linux kernel as a direct payload of coreboot and kexec into your actual kernel. This way you're skipping any disadvantages of grub (if you can name any which matter) and don't need to deal with relatively new and not as much battle tested code to boot your trusted kernel.

RIP Linode. It was the 2nd (after Slicehost) "cloud service" I was introduced to back then in 2009 I believe, when my, back then CTO, insisted that "cloud" is the way to go and some job skills (sysadmin) will eventually fade and turn irrelevant. 3 years later same CTO complained that I made other teams within that startup look bad by using Hetzner and OVH duo instead of Amazon's then still relatively new AWS - bills were telling the story way better than I could!