I have had terrible trouble with 7.4.2 and 8.1.0 on a Dell XPS9360. Whether booting from the KNOPPIX DVD (burn iso) or from a boot USB (I use Pendrive's Universal-USB-Installer v. 1.9.8.0, there may be other or later versions) all I got was a blank screen. But a certain amount of whirring suggested to me that the live version was in fact progressing and available. After a lot of messing about with vga=xxx in the KERNEL stanza in /boot/isolinux/isolinux.cfg I iterated to the best, sparsest and most portable version of this configuration file that I have EVER had. It reads
DEFAULT console
TIMEOUT 40
PROMPT 1
LABEL console
KERNEL linux
APPEND initrd=minirt.gz vga=893 lang=uk 1
LABEL video
KERNEL linux
APPEND initrd=minirt.gz vga=893 lang=uk #
By portable I mean this works on an ancient (really ancient) Samsung, any number of Dells in all configurations / ages, likewise Fujitsus. All screens from 800x600 to 1920x1080.
Still can't get 8.1.0 to work using a boot USB (DVD is fine). The architecture dictated by Pendrive leads to a configuration location error ("Can't find ..") from the very start. Even mimicking the geography of the 7.4.2 boot USB does not mend this.
Fergus
Dell OptiPlex 3060 MICRO DESKTOP PC COMPUTER I5 8TH GEN UP TO 32GB UP TO 2TB M.2
$350.00
Dell 14" TOUCHSCREEN IntelQuadCore 16GB RAM up to 512GB SSD Fingerprint BT Win11
$210.00
Dell 14" TOUCHSCREN Laptop 8th Gen Core i5 16GB RAM 512GB SSD/256 Bluetooth W11
$235.00
Lenovo IdeaCentre 3 07IRB8 Desktop Intel Core i5-13400 16GB 512GB SSD W11H
$349.99
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D Processor (5 GHz, 8 Cores, Socket AM5), New /Sealed
$309.99
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D 8-Core - 16-Thread 4.2 GHz (5.0 GHz Max Boost) Socket A...
$304.95
HP - Victus 15.6" Full HD 144Hz Gaming Laptop - Intel Core i5 - 8GB Memory - ...
$879.99
Intel Core i7-2600 SR00B 8MB Cache 3.40GHz QuadCore Desktop CPU Processor
$24.99
Dell 15.6" NVIDIA Gaming Laptop - Intel Quad Core i7 64GB RAM 2TB SSD Windows 11
$523.00
CHUWI CoreBox X Windows 10 Mini PC Intel Core i7 Desktop 8+256GB SSD 4K Decoding
$130.49