The solution to UEFI is to refrain from using it. Just use a classic BIOS.
If some Linux distribution cannot boot via a legacy BIOS (how difficult is that, really? we've been doing it for over 30 years), then it's not an OS worth using.
Relative to everything else BIOS software has not changed much in 30 years (ask yourself why; it does not need to), and only a couple of companies have a monopoly on nearly all BIOS software.
A BIOS does not need features. It does not need a shell and applications. It just needs to initialise hardware and launch a bootloader, and to be able to do this from a variety of media. That is, relatively, a very simple task. You want it to work everytime, with no fiddling.
UEFI is not giving you anything that is worth the hassle it can cause and the complications it can add to simply booting a device. It is not giving you more freedom.
Whatever the reasoning behind UEFI (maybe there is no compelling reason; that wouldn't be a first), UEFI is a recipe for disaster. Because MS is headed downhill, they will get desperate and will try anything to retain market share; and they have a history of using complexity and obscurity as a way of disincentiving many users from using Windows alternatives (e.g. Gates used the original BIOS strategically this way in the 80's).
UEFI is certainly not the path to "hardware and software freedom". It will not make things easier for any user who wants to use different OS's on a variety of HW. But it may be abused by MS who has immense influence on hardware manufacturers.
The BIOS is hardly simple. Apart from the fact that modern OSes need to re-implement half of what the bios was designed for just to get the full adress space, and jump through countless hoops during boot is secondary. There are still timeswhere I have to reboot to change some BIOS setting, which is unnesasarily inconvinient. Presumably, UEFI implentations will be tested and stable.
Also, even if your distribution supports BIOS, that does not mean your motherboard does.
Secure boot is great we just have to demand that we control the keys.