FWIW, you can install Win11 on unsupported hardware with a pretty easy registry edit to bypass the TPM check. I did it for my mom’s PC that lives 600 miles away from me, thus far with no issues.

If it has to be Linux, I’d recommend something that’s immutable and atomic on a platform you’re familiar with so as to prevent careless mistakes by technophobes.

Ubuntu Core, Fedora Silverblue, MicroOS from openSUSE are all pretty stable and have rollback if something gets borked. Unfortunately, nothing is guaranteed to ‘just work’. Good luck!

I’m pretty sure the Exynos S10/Note 10 series from 2019 was the last unlockable bootloader Samsung S you could get.

You could try to sell it or trade it in for something that’s unlockable. Outside of Pixels, Motorola and OnePlus tend to have the most new-ish devices that run custom ROMs.

I just found a decently priced Motorola Edge 40 Pro that I set up with LineageOS, it was stupid easy. Supposedly, it’s getting Android 16 at some point early next year.

This has lots of documentation for recent devices and what kind of challenges you might face. https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/

Barring any of that, some type of debloat software is gonna be your best bet. Good luck!