I tried booting Ubuntu 16.04 from a Live USB on my HP 2133. Following the initial menu and the Ubuntu loading screen, the screen did some funky stuff for a few seconds and then went black and stayed that way.

I did some research, and from all that I read, I found that other people who were having trouble booting Linux on the same hardware thought their problems were connected to the video card.

The video card on my HP 2133 is a VIA Chrome9 HC IGP.

I subsequently tried Lubuntu 16.04 but was met with the same results.

Have a look at this page, it is for Arch, but it gives you insight about VIA IGP driver. Try booting with modprobe.blacklist=viafb as suggested.

Don't forget to immediately after you install the system or you may end up arguing with every reboot.

How do I access the kernel commandline (which is what the page you sent me to suggested doing)?

When booting your Ubuntu usb, you should see a boot menu. When it is highlighted, hit the 'e' key on your keyboard and the menu should change and you will several lines of text one of which begins with the word 'linux'. Arrow down to that line and arrow right to the section where the boot parameters are and enter:

Save the changes and continue booting. If you see a key option at the bottom of the screen to set parameters you could use that option, it's simpler. This is a one time change to boot the usb and you will have to do the blacklist after install.

I tried hitting e, but nothing happened.

When I hit escape, a screen that said "boot: live, live install, etc." appeared.

When I hit tab (after rebooting), the screen didn't change but at the bottom of the install boot menu, there was a line that said "/casper/..." and so on.

Just add it to the end of that line (caveat; I haven't booted a Ubuntu liveCD in years ...)

Still no success. I even tried appending the modeprobe.blacklist=viafb string to \boot\grub\loopback.cfg and \isolinux\txt.cfg.

The Ubuntu documentation at their site below explains other options in more detail. Using the 'e' key is very standard and has been for years. Not sure why it would not work. Have you tried using this flash drive on another computer and what results did you have. I'm not sure how you tried to make the changes you mention in your last post as an Ubuntu Live usb is read-only and no changes are saved on reboot. The boot options changes discussed at the site below are also one time changes.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootOptions

i can't help but notice that there seems to be more than 1 typo in there:
arthurayetiss1, please separate code from other text by putting it in code blocks (see my sig) and keep in mind that computers are very unforgiving with syntax.

@yancek I don't know why the 'e' key wasn't working, but I tried that multiple times. As far as the live usb being read-only, I was able to access and modify it in Windows 7.

@ondoho Thanks for the advice about the code blocks; I will do so in the future.

I was able to boot up ArchLinux using:
However, I still have had no success with Ubuntu.