I've been trying to install Linux on my old HP EliteBook 745 with a Ryzen 5 3500U PRO for a few weeks now. I started out with plain Ubuntu, and while it worked once, I quickly faced a black screen upon booting again. I thought switching to Arch might give me more control over drivers and troubleshooting, and it worked a few times, but I only get it running consistently with the 'nomodeset' option. Now I'm onto Linux Mint, and after a successful boot once, I'm back to inconsistent booting. I'm really puzzled since it has worked before, just not reliably. Any advice?
2 Answers
You might find this helpful: run through those troubleshooting guides available for Ubuntu and Mint. They often help clarify issues. Just a heads up though, if something's off with your Xorg configuration, you might need to look into those packages. I know it can feel overwhelming since you're new to this, but it’s worth a shot!
It sounds like you're dealing with some common issues that can arise, especially with integrated graphics. You might want to check a couple of things: First, make sure you're disabling Secure Boot in your BIOS; that can cause booting issues. Also, some users have reported that problems like this can be related to incorrect drivers or just how the system's trying to handle your graphics. Without seeing error messages, it's hard to pinpoint, but these steps might help!
I don’t have a physical GPU either, just integrated graphics, and I don't get any error messages because the screen goes black. I’m currently in legacy boot mode.
By the way, I’m using Linux Mint 22.1 XFCE.
I checked those links, and their tools indicated a problem with Xorg. It seemed to point out that the issue can't be reported because it doesn't look like an official package. They mentioned updating indexes, but I'm clueless about that as I did a fresh install and haven't added anything else.