UltraNote IV LE 14" - Ubuntu distros not installing - Antergos (Arch) OK

Hi,

I'm having great difficulty installing Ubuntu derivatives (Mint and Elementary OS) on a new UltraNote IV LE 14". I've tried bootable USB sticks, copying an installation from a USB stick to a drive partition with GParted and cloning the same with CloneZilla.

The USB sticks get as far as the Grub screen then go to a blank screen regardless of whether I choose to install or run from the stick. The copy and cloning attempts only led to the Terminal style Grub screen without the boot options. I didn't expect those to work but thought they were worth a shot.

Antergos, which is Arch rather than Ubuntu based, installed fine but I'd much rather install Elementary OS and Mint on separate partitions.

GParted and CloneZilla took a very long time to get going when used on bootable USB sticks so I waited quite a while on several occasions with the Ubuntu based installs but nothing happened after over 30 minutes. The Antergos install didn't show any signs of being slow.

Has anybody faced this problem and/or have any ideas? I had a look through the Linux forums here but couldn't find anything which helped.

Thanks.

Specs:

Chassis & Display UltraNote: 14" Glossy HD LED Backlit Widescreen (1366x768)
Processor (CPU) Intel® Pentium® Quad Core Processor N4200 (4 x 1.10GHz, 2.2GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM) 16GB HyperX IMPACT 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card Integrated Intel® HD Graphics
1st Hard Disk 500GB SEAGATE HYBRID 2.5" SSHD Drive, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (5400 rpm)
Partitions: 500GB
M.2 SSD Drive 120GB KINGSTON SSDNow M.2 2280 G2, SATA 6Gb/s (550MB/R, 200MB/W)
Partitions: 120GB

I have no experience of the Ultranote but cannot see anything in the spec that should be a problem for Linux, although there could be a need for an updated kernel with the new CPUs. Have you tried creating a bootable USB with Unetbootin: http://unetbootin.github.io/ it is not one of my favoured apps but can be useful, Mint is available with it and plain Ubuntu. Rather than copying or cloning I would try a new install from the USB.

Hi Stephen,

Thanks for the suggestion but it didn't get me anywhere - just a blank screen after the grub menu page, the same as the standard live sticks.

I've tried installing on a USB hard drive and booting from that but it was no more successful.

This is frightfully irksome!

A long shoot but worth trying. I had some problems installing Ubuntu on the m2 of my Octane this was some time back and cannot remember exactly but know the HDD was part of the problem, it was flagged as the boot drive, as I ordered without an OS PCS had put the trial srive on the WD HDD. I eventually took the HDD out and did the install with only the m2, also a Kingston, and it was fine. I also made sure the boot flag was taken off the HDD when I put it back. This may be worth a try, albeit a slighrly annoying one as it involves taking the machine apart but worth noting PCS allow you to do this without voiding the warranty.

If I think of anythig else I will post again but am away at the moment and not looking at these fora very often.

Hi Stephen, it looks like you were correct a couple of days back about it being a kernel thing. I tried MX-16 which installed without any problems.

I'll just have to wait for Elementary to catch up. In the meantime Antergos is OK, though it's taking me a while to get used to.

Thanks for your help.

You di not say which version ? As this is applolake , this might need kernel 4.8, then try Ubuntu 16.04.2 .

Also check if video is not output on HDMI or VGA

I've got Fedora 25 working on an Ultranote IV and an Ultranote IV LE - both working flawlessly without any changes to the BIOS for UEFI, boot etc. I used a standard KDE USB 64bit desktop spin and hit the "install to hard disk" button on both.