mate-optimus VS Rufus

when I started out, I used red hat, Suse linux, and then finally I jumped to Ubuntu, when they killed gnome and rolled out their new GUI later, I switched to Ubuntu Mate, with xfce alternatively installed. And then later came MINT. which is based on ubuntu anyway.

Prepare a blank USB stick with a copy of Ubuntu (write the ISO to the USB stick with Rufus)

Ubuntu MATE (simple, well maintained, has the Ubuntu ecosystem support and should work well)

Linux Mint has its advantages, but your title doesn't make sense when there's Ubuntu MATE.

(btw: since the PC is older I would reccommend Ubuntu Mate or Xubuntu as those come with a lighter Desktop)

You can always change desktops later to Cinnamon or MATE or XFCE. If you want to try those desktops on your USB drive, you can download Ubuntu MATE or Xubuntu and try them on USB, just like you're currently doing.

My experience has been that Ubuntu's Gnome DE is somewhat less suitable to older computers than Ubuntu "official flavors" with lighter DE's -- Ubuntu Budgie (Budgie DE), Kubuntu (KDE Plasma DE), Ubuntu MATE (MATE DE), and Xubuntu (XFCE DE) -- all of which use somewhat less resources than the Gnome DE.

Consider looking at several of the Ubuntu official flavors -- Kubuntu (Plasma DE), Ubuntu Budgie (Budgie DE), Xubuntu (XFCE), Ubuntu MATE (MATE DE). I wouldn't bother with Lubuntu (LXQT DE) unless you need a lightweight distro, because the LXQT DE is not as mainstream or well-supported as the others.

Based on recent experience helping a handful of friends move from Windows to Linux, I suggest starting with an official Ubuntu flavor (Ubuntu Budgie, Kubuntu, Xbuntu, Ubuntu Mate) 22.04 LTS release, picking which ever desktop environment appeals to you. Official Ubuntu flavors are the Ubuntu OS layer with standard but different desktop environments.

Get Rufus

You can also use Rufus. It has options to customize Windows 11 and one of them is to disable the hardware module requirement.

https://rufus.ie

You can use Rufus: https://rufus.ie/en/

To modify the ISO to turn off hardware check and TPM support for Windows 11 to install it on an unsupported PC.

https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/wiki/FAQ#user-content-Help_...

Besides Linux and BSD Unix there is: https://reactos.org/ https://aros.sourceforge.io/ https://www.haiku-os.org/ and https://www.arcanoae.com/arcaos/

I know some third-world nations still use DOS and the BORLAND DOS compilers because people donate old computers to their nations.

With the right OS, old computers are still usable. Please don't throw them away, e-cycle them so they get used by poor nations that cannot afford new PCs.

3. NVMe drives may not gracefully handle sudden disconnections, because USB connections are inherently unreliable interfaces prone to physical disruption and loss of power.

If your drive decides to stop showing up, first try loading up the boot device selection screen in the UEFI, and then insert the drive. It may take several seconds to show up. If trying that a few times doesn’t work, the drive may be stuck in a bad state, and might be recovered with the power cycle technique https://dfarq.homeip.net/fix-dead-ssd/

Always set up automatic backups if you actually have non-replaceable data on the drive. They can and will just suddenly die forever with loss of all data, just like thumb drives. You have been warned.

All that said, there are generally less issues if you are simply putting ventoy on it to install from a loaded iso.

I have a dual raid1 sata enclosure that I use to boot a windows to go install created with Rufus (https://github.com/pbatard/rufus), which makes testing and benchmarking so much nicer to deal with. I’ve even stuck games on it, and other than relative filesystem slowness it works pretty great.

The author has extensive documentation and tutorial content. First steps: download CD image, download Rufus (http://rufus.ie), write the image to the flash drive, remember that this will clear the data on the flash drive and it will not be recoverable.

Seems like you're an absolute newbie. Well, here is the website: https://github.com/pbatard/rufus Direct download link Youtube guide to create a bootable pen-drive

You can use that to create a bootable usb stick using rufus: https://rufus.ie

Note: Once you have created the "persistent partition" on the pedrive (you can use Rufus),during the Ubuntu installation you have to select that partition as your /home