I don't have the infra (nor the knowledge or expertise) to create a LiveCD I didn't think about Fedora. This is indeed a good pointer, I will definitely try that
Seems doable, though documentation could be updated https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Talk:How_to_create_and_use_a_Live_CD https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/creating-and-using-a-live-in...
Is there a crowd sourced list of machines people have used Cent OS 8 on? If not what information would be useful to have on such a list to avoid redundancy but enable easy determination of the suitability of some hardware?