Yesterday i just wanted to install one linux system for doing C++ programming on my main dev system (i7 4790k, UEFI, no secure boot, only SSDs, GTX 970), but it was a disaster.

I tried installing 6 distros with the goal of running a native linux system, but 5 of them failed miserably :-(

Only the last one "Ubuntu 17.10.1" was working perfectly without any problems. As a matter of fact, ubuntu 17 was the only one which actually started the installer...

All others (openSuse, Fedora, Linux Mint, SteamOS, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS) was not starting at all (Crashing while booting from the usbstick or the dvd-drive -> Graphics errors in the framebuffer fully crashing the X startup or kernel panik with ACPI errors). To be fair, i tried arch and gentoo too and starting the installation console from the live isos was no problem - but i dont wanted to use a source based linux distro by any means - so these dont count.

It was very frustrating and i was planning to try out some BSD os instead if all of them failed - but fortunatly at least ubuntu works -.- Now i can finally do some programming

If someone is interested, i captured the install of fedora, linux mint and ubuntu 17 - i can upload it to my channel...

Hey what did you expected ?

Target Ubuntu if you are a beginner with Linux. Forget about BSD.

You have many things to take into account. Many distro (like Debian) will not provide non-free drivers/firmwares/softwares during installation, thus making a lot of hardware to fail.

I always had issues with running the nouveau drivers (free nvidia drivers) on Geforce cards. So installing the proprietary ones was always the only solution for me to have any graphical things with nVidia cards.

You'll also certainly have to face issues with network cards, wifi cards, mouse and keyboard if on laptop...

If you want something out of the box, or plug & play, then use Windows. Even Mac OS might not completely work neither, depending on the hardware, if this is not the original hardware provided by apple.

21 hours ago, Silence@SiD said:

Hey what did you expected ?

Target Ubuntu if you are a beginner with Linux. Forget about BSD.

You have many things to take into account. Many distro (like Debian) will not provide non-free drivers/firmwares/softwares during installation, thus making a lot of hardware to fail.

I always had issues with running the nouveau drivers (free nvidia drivers) on Geforce cards. So installing the proprietary ones was always the only solution for me to have any graphical things with nVidia cards.

You'll also certainly have to face issues with network cards, wifi cards, mouse and keyboard if on laptop...

If you want something out of the box, or plug & play, then use Windows. Even Mac OS might not completely work neither, depending on the hardware, if this is not the original hardware provided by apple.

Well in 2018 i was expecting a bit more stability - at least a VGA like installer when the GUI fails, so that i can at least change to the proprietary nvidia driver later on...

Also i am not a linux beginner, i have used gentoo linux successfully for many years but dropped it due to the fact that i have no time to fiddle around with kernel making or trying to get emerge happy anymore.

But i think the main problem here on my system was mostly not X, but rather the ACPI which crashes the kernel (bad UEFI support?).

27 minutes ago, Finalspace said:

Well in 2018 i was expecting a bit more stability - at least a VGA like installer when the GUI fails, so that i can at least change to the proprietary nvidia driver later on...

Also i am not a linux beginner, i have used gentoo linux successfully for many years but dropped it due to the fact that i have no time to fiddle around with kernel making or trying to get emerge happy anymore.

But i think the main problem here on my system was mostly not X, but rather the ACPI which crashes the kernel (bad UEFI support?).

Nouveau drivers are free drivers that are mostly implemented by reverse engineering. nVidia does not provide the specs of its cards (AMD and Intel do). The default driver X will use when detecting an nVidia card will be the nouveau drivers. If it crashes... Then disable the nouveau drivers by yourself. All cards nowadays are VESA compatibles, right (if I'm not wrong), but you'll have to explicitly tell xorg to use that driver. Also, you might have to blacklist the nouveau driver.

You can also disable ACPI at boot time and sees if things are better. Many options could be given to the boot loader.

For installation, choose manually the old ncurse interface instead of the graphical one if you have this choice.

Also, I never had that few chances where nothing wanted to work. I always use ncurse installation instead of the graphical one. Sometimes I could have boot crash. Then I install the firmware. And normally things start to work.

If it still crashes, use a newer kernel. If that does not help, try to grab logs, analyze them and report a bug. But I personally never reached that state where boot crashes even with having installed the firmware and a recent kernel. I could have had the network card not working, or the touchpad, or the wifi card. But not the main functionalities.