Ok, I got an external USB NIC that I ordered to test this out.
I had to scroll down to your comment in the thread on July 26th where you outlined what needed to be done to the bios.
I had a lot of trouble getting to the Legacy Boot mode, but finally got there with this https://community.intel.com/t5/Intel-NUCs/NUC10-can-t-enable-Legacy-Boot/td-p/602288
Certainly wasn’t obvious.
With that I was able to get to the Qubes OS install. Still seemed pretty rough. I had installed Kubuntu on the NUC’s drive, but will install a bootable Linux USB & just format that.
Anyways, with the BIOS instructions (that I’d missed before), it looks like I am making progress.