On old hardware I use Debian. You can use whatever DE you prefer, I prefer x, but you have a graphics card so maybe you want gnome or kde. Ventoy liveusb with a few different distros can help you pick something that you like and let’s you fully and quickly rage quit a distro if you come to realize that debugging legacy hardware/software compatibility issues is it’s own hobby that is separate from not wanting to be tracked at the OS level or wearing sexy socks or whatever reason you have for using Linux.

Oh great. I was going to suggest just that.

How are you booting to the livecd without grub?

When you are using the livecd are you booting all the way to the Ubuntu desktop? What gives you the nvme device name error?