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 x3550 M4 7042-CR8 6-Bay Server System Intel Xeon E5-2640v2 2.50Ghz 8GB No HD
$419.99
IBM Power S822 8284-22A 12SFF Power8 3.89GHz 6-Core 64GB RAM No Bezel/HDD Server
$319.99
1U IBM x3550 M5 4 Bay SFF SAS3 Server 2x E5-2683 V3 28 Core 128GB DDR4 2x Tray
$318.00
IBM Power S822 12-Bay Server System Power8 Core 3.42Ghz DVD-Rom Drive 64GB No HD
$349.99
IBM System x3550 M3 Dual Intel Xeon X5650 @2.67GHz 32GB RAM No HDD
$84.50
IBM SYSTEM x3200 M2 Server - HDD wiped, No OS
$75.00
IBM Server eServer | IBMR1000 | UPS 1000VA 700W W/New Batteries
$115.00
IBM Power S822 8284-22A 12SFF Power8 3.89GHz 6Core 64GB RAM No HDD Server System
$359.99
IBM QRadar xx29 Server 4412Q2A
$293.99
IBM Power 7 Express Server 74Y2457 32GB
$99.00