Can anyone explain to me what are the technical reasons that Surface Go (eMMC version) UEFI refuses to directly boot any EFI USB other than that with a Windows OS on it? Is this the typical Evil Corporation routine by Microsoft (jk) or is there a genuine firmware mistake/bug?
If you don't know what I'm talking about, assume you wanna install a Linux OS on your Surface Go, what's your first impulse? You create a bootable USB with Rufus, you insert it in the USB-C slot and you turn on your system while holding down the volume-down button to toggle the alternate-boot sequence (that's of course enabled in your firmware). This doesn't seem to boot anything other than whatever OS is installed on your system, not the LiveUSB.
You think that's weird, but OK. You boot into your firmware settings and change the boot order manually, setting the USB on top. You boot up, but - alas! - USB still won't boot. Finally you boot up your Windows and go to advanced restart. From there you try to boot from USB, and yet again if you try selecting the option to boot from EFI USB the system will simply reboot into the OS already on your Surface.
You do the advanced restart again but this time instead of EFI USB you select the weird named option Linpus Lite - and finally you boot from your Linux USB (Which is any distro - I tried with Ubuntu, Fedora and PopOS!).
The above jumping though hoops demonstrates that Surface Go doesn't boot Linux bootable USBs directly for some reason. I wanna know the technical reason why. By the way, this has got nothing to do with Secure Boot as it can be turned on or off, it doesn't matter.