On 2024-07-16 13:16, Olaf Meeuwissen via Dng wrote:
...
> Boots fine off a USB stick with the Refracta Live installer *after* you
> disable Secure Boot in the BIOS.

This ^^^

If you can access the "BIOS" or "setup" or what ever it's called these
days, that's the first step. Then, if you see an option to disable
secure boot, you can run any OS you like on it - with the matching CPU
architecture of course. Even with a UEFI only secure boot, there is a
very good chance of most recent Linux distros installing. This is
because they include the "shim".

https://wiki.debian.org/SecureBoot#Shim
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface/Secure_Boot

So this is where MS comes in. I wasn't very satisfied with the reasons I
found, and so only buy machines where secure boot and UEFI can be disabled.

Thinkpads used are pretty cheap.