1

Newish laptop Asus X453 with UEFI and Windows 8.1. Tried to install Ubuntu 15.04 64 bit, installation was fine, but it wouldn't run. I'm not quite ready to ditch Windows completely, so I tried other distros, including CentOS 7 64 bit which does dual boot. I don't understand why Ubuntu wouldn't get past the first screen, yet CentOS 7 does and runs as I'd wanted Ubuntu to just work? Any way to keep Windows 8.1 meantime and dual boot Ubuntu 15.04?

Kate49
  • 11
  • 1
    Please be more specific and informative, what do you mean by the first screen? GRUB? – Aizuddin Zali Oct 16 '15 at 15:26
  • When booting up, the Ubuntu purple screen comes up with the little dots underneath changing between white and red. That's where the Asus X453 stops. Nothing happens until I hold down the power switch. then (before I tried CentOS 7) the only OS was apparently Windows 8.1. I'd much prefer Ubuntu if I could get it to work on the Asus. I do use Ubuntu 14.04 on my older laptop, but I'm a Linux newbie. Thanks – Kate49 Oct 16 '15 at 15:31
  • 1
    we need to make your boot sequence more verbose. Please follow this guide. – Aizuddin Zali Oct 16 '15 at 15:35
  • does your laptop has graphics card? maybe it is the one which is stopping Ubuntu to boot – Alex Jones Oct 16 '15 at 15:45
  • I can't answer the question of why specifically it's failing, given the limited information at hand; but generally speaking, distributions differ in their build options, the drivers in the kernels, quirks of their startup scripts, etc. Thus, one may succeed when another one fails. This is especially true when dealing with very new hardware, which may require drivers that haven't yet filtered down to all distributions. – Rod Smith Oct 17 '15 at 00:26
  • Thanks. I did try the verbose option using the guide Aizuddin Zali pointed me to, but the Asus has an rpm grub. But I managed to follow the instructions, just for interest, on my older Ubuntu laptop. And put it back the way it was! – Kate49 Oct 19 '15 at 10:27
  • Thanks to Edward Torvalds, I'll have to look that up. And thanks to Rod Smith. I guess I'll leave the Asus as it is, with dual boot Windows 8.1 and CentOS 7, and use my older laptop with Ubuntu for most things. I did want to learn more Linux - with one on deb/apt-get and one on rpm/yum I guess I will! I appreciate the help - another reason to stick with Ubuntu as my main distro. Thanks. – Kate49 Oct 19 '15 at 10:36
  • I have the same machine Kate. The only Ubuntu I could get working was 12.04, and I had to select a 3.5.0 kernel from the boot screen. But it still has significant issues, so I wouldn't recommend it! At some point I will post the boot log. IIRC it says it has mounted disks and then freezes. – joeytwiddle Nov 03 '15 at 02:04
  • Many thanks, joeytwiddle. I gave up on trying Ubuntu on my Asus, in fact since I don't want Windows 10, I pretty much don't use the Asus but rather my older one with Ubuntu and letting myself get used to the transition to Linux from Windows. I'd be glad of any tips to get the Asus changed to Linux though. I've left it dual boot Win 8.1/Centos 7 because I wasn't sure if the Asus, being so pernickety, would actually boot up and run if I tried to install Linux totally. – Kate49 Nov 04 '15 at 10:41
  • If you try my answer below but are still having issues, then you could record what goes wrong: Press F2 when the Ubuntu splash screen comes up, to get the text that spins by. If the text stops scrolling (freezes at some point), share a picture with us! – joeytwiddle Nov 30 '15 at 07:11

2 Answers2

0

Try this simple change: Bring up the BIOS (tap Delete as soon as the machine comes on, or maybe F2), and change "OS SELECTION" from "Windows 8" to "Windows 7".

Disclaimer: I am in a slightly different situation from you, but perhaps the solution might be the same. I had installed Ubuntu 12.04, and upgraded it to 14.04, but they would both only complete booting with 3.5.0 kernels, and even then the 14.04 install would freeze when it auto-suspended.

However after I made the small bios change I could boot into Ubuntu 14.04 with the recommended 3.13.0 kernel and it worked well! Now GLX and DPI have been detected, which is a step up from running 12.04 on a 3.5.0 kernel.

(Then to get two-finger scrolling enabled, I just had to install a new kernel and driver.)

Community
  • 1
joeytwiddle
  • 1,957
0

Update as at May 2016. Laptop Asus X435M, on trying to get Ubuntu to dual-boot with Windows 8.1. Result: Nothing worked. After a lapse of time, I tried again, and again, and again, with Ubuntu and Linux Mint. Although the live CDs would run, and the installers worked, on start-up the laptop would not proceed past the grub bootloader. Since I hadn't been using Windows for 6 months (using Ubuntu on my main m/c) I let the installers use the whole hard disk. And again, got nothing. In BIOS, after the Asus splashscreen, using Esc to access the BIOS, with Secure Boot disabled, CSM/Legacy enabled and the I/O USB unlocked (the Asus has no optical drive so I was using a USB DVD writer) again total failure. The laptop didn't work at all. Rescued with Knoppix 7 - thank you, Knoppix developers! That got the Asus a working operating system, at least. Taking heart, I tried to install Ubuntu which failed again, and Linix Mint which also failed. Then I tried other distros, Mageia, OpenSUSE. At one point I had to again install Knoppix to get the laptop a working OS again. The only distro (of those I tried) that worked on this particular Asus laptop was OpenSUSE. Initially 13.2, but since it worked, now it's working with OpenSUSE Leap 17.1 installed (KDE version). In conclusion for this particular laptop, I can only guess there's some basic hardware incompatibility. For this one, it's OpenSUSE or Knoppix. Though I can live with either since this laptop was to be used for mainly composing essays, I will stick with Ubuntu or Linux Mint on my main computer.

Kate49
  • 11