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 PowerEdge T420 2x Xeon E5-2430 V2 2.50GHZ 32GB DDR3-1600MHZ 2x 550W PSU
$149.95
Dell Precision 5810 Workstation Xeon E5-1650 6C 3.5GHz 16GB 500GB Win10 K2200
$115.94
Dell Precision T3600 XEON E5-1607 3.0GHz 16GB RAM 500GB HD WIN10 Pro Workstation
$99.00
Intel Xeon W-2145 - 3.7 GHz 8-Core (SR3LQ) Processor
$110.00
SR1XP Intel Xeon E5-2680 v3 12 Core 30MB 2.5GHz LGA 2011-3 Grade A Processor
$4.50
Intel Xeon E5-2699 v3 2.3GHz 18-Core 45MB 145W LGA2011-3 CPU/Processor SR1XD
$40.99
Genuine Intel Xeon E5-2680V4 2.40Ghz 14-Core 35MB LGA2011 CPU P/N: SR2N7
$14.99
Intel Xeon Gold 6140 SR3AX 2.3GHz 18-Core Processor CPU
$32.79
Dell PowerEdge R730 2x E5-2699V3 2.3Ghz 36 Core 128GB RAM H730 X520-I350 2x750W
$329.99
Dell Poweredge R730xd LFF 14-Bay 2U Server | Choose Your CPU & RAM Config
$489.99