Description of problem:

I've found that in recent kernels (>=4.14) the option "CONFIG_SPI_INTEL_SPI_PCI" (and thus "CONFIG_SPI_INTEL_SPI") are enabled in Mageia:

$ grep CONFIG_SPI_INTEL_SPI /boot/config-4.14.65-desktop-1.mga6 
CONFIG_SPI_INTEL_SPI=m
CONFIG_SPI_INTEL_SPI_PCI=m
# CONFIG_SPI_INTEL_SPI_PLATFORM is not set

As a result, the modules below are compiled in these kernels:

$ ls /lib/modules/4.14.65-desktop-1.mga6/kernel/drivers/mtd/spi-nor/intel-spi*
/lib/modules/4.14.65-desktop-1.mga6/kernel/drivers/mtd/spi-nor/intel-spi.ko.xz
/lib/modules/4.14.65-desktop-1.mga6/kernel/drivers/mtd/spi-nor/intel-spi-pci.ko.xz

These modules are known to produce severe BIOS corruption on certain Lenovo (and other brands, too) laptops. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1734147 for a quick refresh of the bug.

Unsetting "CONFIG_SPI_INTEL_SPI_PLATFORM" was fine to avoid the bug, but kernels starting at version 4.14 include a new option "CONFIG_SPI_INTEL_SPI_PCI", that is not disabled in Mageia configuration.

I don't really know the actual impact of these issue on a Lenovo laptop, but as far as I know, other distros are disabling both configuration options and in kernels starting at version 4.18 both SPI_INTEL_SPI_PCI and SPI_INTEL_SPI_PLATFORM are marked as "DANGEROUS" (see https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/drivers/mtd/spi-nor/Kconfig#L92)

So, IMHO this option should be disabled also in Mageia.