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
AMD EPYC 7282 CPU Processor 16 Cores 32 Threads 2.8GHZ up to 3.2GHZ 120W no lock
$76.00
Intel - Core i7-12700K Desktop Processor 12 (8P+4E) Cores up to 5.0 GHz Unloc...
$419.99
Intel - Core i9-12900K Desktop Processor 16 (8P+8E) Cores up to 5.2 GHz Unloc...
$619.99
Intel Core i5-9500T SRF4D 2.2GHz CPU Processor
$58.00
Intel Core i9-13900KF Unlocked Desktop Processor - 24 Cores (8P+16E) & 32 Thread
$535.84
Intel - Core i7-14700K 14th Gen 20-Core 28-Thread - 4.3GHz (5.6GHz Turbo) Soc...
$444.99
Intel Core i5-12600KF Desktop Processor 10 (6P+4E) Cores up to 4.9 GHz Unlocked.
$145.59
Intel Core i7-14700K Unlocked Desktop Processor
$409.99
Intel XEON E5-2699V3 CPU PROCESSOR 18 CORE 2.30GHZ SR1XD L518B954 145W
$46.00
Intel Xeon E5-2695 V4 2.10 GHz 18-Core SR2J1 LGA2011-3 CPU Processor 2695V4
$29.87