It may also depend on what partition table the drive has. The old format is MBR (Master Boot Record, GParted calls this “ms-dos”) and the new format is GPT (GUID Partition Table). I believe modern UEFI systems with no CSM (compatibility service mode, in the BIOS) will only boot from drives with GPT partition tables, although once the OS is running it doesn’t matter (MBR drives can be used as data drives).
You can use GParted to switch between MBR and GPT, though you have to delete all partitions on the drive first and obviously lose all the data. Note this is beyond simple formatting or partitioning, it’s much more fundamental to the drive structure.
Sometimes I’ve had drives that just won’t boot no matter what I do. I just switch USB sticks and the new one works like a charm even though it seems identical to the other one.
Also (looks around for Linux users) you know what works for me? Reformat the drive in Windows. (ducks as things are thrown) It often resets these little quirks and makes a very basic drive that seems to work everywhere.
The encrypted EFI partition sticks out to me as potentially problematic. I agree with Fraoch, perhaps try a different flash drive. It shouldn’t be this difficult.
Just ran into this same issue with kUbuntu on framework 13. I changed two things from the recommended kUbuntu install and the device was detected. (creating the bootable drive from windows).
(At one point I wrote I that changed three things, but I got distracted and forgot the third. If there are still issues I can try and wrack my memory)
I changed this but I assume it isn’t the relevant difference:
Instead of using the recommend disk burner from kUbuntu (uNetBootin) I used the disk burn that was previously recommended by Ubuntu (Rufus)
Steps that likely made the difference
instead of burning as an ISO I burned as a “DD” instead of “iso” (this overwrites the whole usb drive)
I read elsewhere framework can’t boot from usb-c devices (seems really odd given the way the the expansion cards work) so I flipped my device from the USB-C end to the USB-A end
I made both adjustments at once, so I cannot say which is causal.
Those two adjustments allowed the bootloader to notice my drive was bootable and install.