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
GIGABYTE GA-X99-UD4P MOTHERBOARD, M.2 SATA3, LGA2011-3, DDR4, & I/O Shield
$69.99
ASUS H170M-PLUS Motherboard M-ATX Intel H170 LGA1151 DDR4 SATA3 HDMI DVI-D VGA
$47.99
Asus H110M-C LGA 1151 DDR4 SDRAM Desktop Motherboard w/ I/O shield
$39.95
ASRock B550M Pro SE AM4 DDR4 SATA 6Gb/s 1 PCIe 4.0 x16 Micro ATX Motherboard
$84.99
ASUS PRIME H310M-C R2.0 Motherboard M-ATX Intel H310 LGA1151 DDR4 SATA3 DVI VGA
$39.95
Asrock Z390 Phantom Gaming 4S/AC Wifi 8th/9th Gen Intel 1151 Motherboard Bulk
$41.07
MSI PRO B650-P WiFi AMD AM5 DDR5 WiFi 6E ProSeries Motherboard
$96.01
Asus Prime H310M-A R2.0 Intel LGA 1151 DDR4 Desktop Motherboard
$54.99
Asus Prime X299- A Intel LGA 2066 ATX Motherboard & Intel Core I7-7800X
$168.99
Asus X99-A II Foxconn LGA2011 ATX Motherboard - Motherboard Only
$105.00