
I tried my coworker's MacBook Pro, exactly the same model, specs, etc. I just thought that maybe macOS wants to see a separate partition or something like that. For x reason, I also made separate partition for Ubuntu, but that didn't change a thing. I used balenaEtcher for writing ISO to a USB flash drive. Under External Boot, selected Allow booting from external drive. entered recovery mode, Startup Security Utility, under Secure Boot, selected No Security. I tried the same flash drives on my older MBP where there is no T2 chip. Both show up the same on the Startup Manager window. I tried Sandisk USB-C flash drive and also type-a flash drive with Apple USB-C to USB-A adapter. Hold down the Option key to get the Boot Select menu. I click the Update button, and the Apple logo comes on with a loading progress bar. Then it shows that there's a necessary update.
Select either of the flash drive ones and after about 5 seconds, I get Apple logo on the screen with loading bar. Right now, I have Windows 10 installed with Bootcamp.
I would like to install Ubuntu Desktop, 18.04 or 20.04 on my MacBook Pro 2019 16" so it would be on dual boot, but I'm having problems with it.