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
WD 500GB My Passport SSD, Portable External Solid State Drive WDBAGF5000ARD-WESN
$59.99
WD_BLACK 1TB SN850X NVMe SSD, Internal Gaming Solid State Drive - WDS100T2X0E
$99.99
SanDisk 2TB SSD PLUS M.2 NVMe PCIe Gen 3.0, Internal SSD - SDSSDA3N-2T00-G26
$119.99
Western Digital 500GB WD Red SA500 NAS SATA Internal SSD - WDS500G1R0A
$69.99
Western Digital PC SN730 256GB NVMe SDBQNTY-256G M.2 2280 PCIe Solid State (SSD)
$16.00
Patriot P210 128GB 256GB 512GB 1TB 2TB 2.5" SATA 3 6GB/s Internal SSD PC/MAC Lot
$14.99
400GB SATA SSD SSDSC2BA400G3 Intel 2.5" Enterprise SSD Drive DC S3700 6Gbps
$17.10
Netac 1TB 2TB 512GB Internal SSD 2.5'' SATA III 6Gb/s Solid State Drive lot
$13.99
4 TB SSD SATA III Drive 2.5" Solid State Drive SATAIII 6Gb/s UP to 540MB/s
$149.00
Fanxiang 256GB 512GB 1TB 2TB 4TB Internal SSD 2.5" SATA III 6GB/s for PC/MAC Lot
$197.99