While it would be way too advanced (and I don't
think MSFT can really 'cancel' keys, as that's an OEM thing but I'm willing to learn more) you can also just assign your own keys and load them into system. Something like
mokutil
makes it easier but you can do it by hand by just moving some files around - or so I've read over the years. I have never done this before but I know you can do it.
thank you folks for hanging in there with me and replying throughout the day, kept me going and trying diff options. Why in the world the manuals don't say these things
That's what we do (though I had no part in this one), at least as long as the OP is willing and able to give us useful information.
p.s. of all distros Linux which one I should keep for ML workloads and also for clearly a newbie person?
Any of the major distros are going to have the same software available, so it's not a huge difference.
What is a major difference is the desktop environment (DE). Ubuntu uses GNOME and lots of people don't like that DE. It has fans, else it wouldn't be as popular as it is. However, there are many 'official Ubuntu flavors' that come with different defaults and different DEs.
I'd just pick a DE that looks good, a major distro family, and go for it. The Ubuntu family (and some derivatives) are pretty solid for a new user. You'll quickly learn about the package management process and start gaining fluidity shortly. One thing you'll hopefully learn quickly is that backups are important, especially for new folks.
We'll talk about that more after you've lost some data or time. That's usually how people get more interested in backing up their system and deciding what they actually need to back up. (Depending on your processes, you don't need a full system backup. I just preserve my /home/user directory as that's all I really need.)