Linux

It is highly unlikely that you have malware sophisticated enough to do something like compromise installation media (already exceedingly rare) yet not sophisticated enough to bypass secure boot.

The purpose of secure boot is to verify that the boot loader and kernel are approved by the manufacturer (or friends of such). There are certainly ways to inject software into a system that doesn’t reside in those locations. It just makes boot sector viruses and kernel mode rootkits slightly more technically challenging to write when you can’t simply modify those parts of the operating system directly. If malware gets root on your installation it’s game over whether or not you have secure boot enabled. Much of the software on a computer is none of those things protected by secure boot.

Plus, take another wager: most systems today ship with secure boot enabled. If you were a malware author, would you still be writing malware that needs secure boot turned off to run? Of course not! You would focus on the most common system you can to maximize impact. Thus, boot sector viruses are mostly lost to time. Malware authors moved on.

Overall, it’s a pretty inconsequential feature born of good intentions but practically speaking malware still exists in spite of it. It’s unlikely to matter to any malware you would find in the wild today. Secure boot keys get leaked. You can still get malware in your applications. Some malware even brings its own vulnerable drivers to punch into the kernel anyway and laugh in the face of your secure boot mitigation. The only thing secure boot can actually do when it works is to ensure that on the disk the boot loader and kernel look legit. I guess it kind of helps in theory.

Afaik, secure boot won't increase the security as much as you think.

Did you try to reinstall it? From what you've written, you have some trouble with booting it. Maybe you selected some wrong partition schemes? The best one would be to select "Wipe whole drive and install".

Did you disable secure boot, install it, and the enable it again? If yes, don't. Boot your ISO from the USB with secure boot enabled and install it from there.

Btw, if you worry about security, then also consider also enabling full disk encryption, or at least the encryption of /home/