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
IBM QRadar xx29 Server 4412Q2A
$200.00
IBM Power S822 12-Bay Server System Power8 Core 3.42Ghz DVD-Rom Drive 64GB No HD
$399.99
IBM SYSTEM x3200 M2 Server - HDD wiped, No OS
$75.00
IBM Power 720 POWER7 00E6516 3.6GHz CPU 64GB RAM Server
$209.98
$16000.00
IBM 7944AC1 System x3550 M3 Server 1*Intel Xeon X5650 2.67GHz 4GB SEE NOTES
$27.25
IBM Power S822 8284-22A 12SFF Power8 3.89GHz 6-Core 64GB RAM No Bezel/HDD Server
$319.99
IBM Lenovo X3650 M5 2U 8x 2.5” CTO Rack Server – 2x HS, 2x 750W
$199.00
IBM SYSTEM x3650 M4 Xeon E5-2609 2.40GHZ 16GB DDR3-1066MHZ 2x 550W PSU TESTED
$109.95
IBM System X3500 M4 7383AC1 (E5-2650 v2 2.60GHz - 192GB RAM - M2000 - NO OS/HDD)
$294.92