I don’t know the support model for Framework but they should really be able to work through these issues for such a common distro. With the various things you mentioned it doesn’t sound like bad configuration, it sounds like a hardware issue. Given that Windows is so different from Linux it may be the case that Win11 does a better job masking the issues.
As a long term Linux user I highly recommend the Universal Blue (immutable Fedora) spins. It’s been rock solid on my desktop and 10x better on a laptop I thought was a lemon because Ubuntu would crash or do other weird things about once a week. The immutableness hasn’t really caused me a lot of grief except when I tried to connect my 15yo printer (I just relented and got a new printer) when I had to go through a distrobox.
Doesn’t even have to be the key necessarily. Could get in via some exploit first. Either way taking over the machine became a 2-step process.