The Intel Management Engine (IME) is essentially a separate, small, and proprietary operating system running on a dedicated microcontroller within your Intel processor’s chipset. It’s been a part of Intel platforms since 2006. This tiny OS, often referred to as “firmware,” operates at a deeper level than your Windows or Linux installation, and it’s always on, even when your computer appears to be powered down.
Its primary function is to manage various hardware features, including system boot-up, thermal management, and Intel Active Management Technology (AMT). AMT is particularly noteworthy, allowing remote administrators to control your computer, install operating systems, and even access data regardless of whether the main OS is running. This powerful capability, while useful for IT departments, presents a potential security vulnerability for individual users seeking absolute privacy.
The article does give ample warning of the risks. The main point is that IME is useful for IT managing large deployments, but contrary to the principles embraced by linux.
Before Linux has its own complete hardware manufacturing supply chain, the principles embraced by Linux must first not conflict with users’ everyday use.
… and you might want to test it before it is pushed to stable and provide feedback in bodhi.
→ if you go to the second link (=bodhi), and log in there, then you can add thumbs up and down to BZ#2468995 and post.
Keep in mind this is a testing kernel, and has to be considered as such.
Once it has entered bodhi (blue " pending → testing " becomes yellow “testing”), a link will be available on the page to install the kernel with dnf, if you want to help in testing and provide feedback early.