I have tried numerous flavours of Linux - Ubuntu(32 & 64 bit, just about every version from 11.04 onwards), Ubuntu Studio, Korora, Linuxmint, KXstudio, Debian, Kubuntu, Fedora. Where available I have selected the failsafe option, otherwise noacpi, noapic & nomodeset. Most of them flatly refuse to load from either USB or DVD - they get to various points in the loading process then freeze - I have on occasion left things for up to 30 minutes to cook, but with no result.

One of them(can't remember which) did eventually load up after a fashion, but was so slow & jerky as to be unusable.

I have tested the media in another machine & all work fine.

The last version of Ubuntu that will load up and sucessfully install is 10.04.4 64 bit(not much use now), and I have also recently managed to install AV Linux - which works fine but isn't exactly what I want.

Yesterday I did eventually manage to persuade Ubuntu Studio(this is the flavour that I really want) and it seemed to install(I have a multi-boot system with various Windows versions). However although Windows 7 boots fine Ubuntu(including the recovery option) flatly refuses to do so - it usually stops at the "random: nonblocking pool is initialised" message(I have seen that there can be delays here, but I have left it for over an hour with no result).

I have tried the boot repair .iso, and this too flatly refuses to boot from either USB or DVD/CD. Interestingly I have an older version of this, dating from 2011, which does actually load. But its attempt at repair is fruitless.

My guess is that sometime since 2011 something has happened to just about all flavours of Linux which can't cope with my machine. What is different about AV Linux?

This is a self-build system - details are:

Motherboard ASUSTeK Computer INC. M4A87TD/USB3 (AM3)
CPU AMD Phenom II X4 955
Graphics 767MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 (MSI)
Memory 8.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 668MHz (9-9-9-24)

Does anyone have any idea what is going on here? And more to the point how to make Linux behave on my machine?

Thank you.

Forget "partially" working, because that doesn't satisfy the criteria. My question is whether or not you've ever had any particular Linux version fully working on this system, as it is configured? If so, exactly what version?

My suggestion would be to load Linux with a virtual machine first to determine whether or not each given distribution works with your machine.

I'm largely thinking that the graphics card here is the problem too. Linux has been known to work very well with that AMD CPU.

Try booting it without the GPU and see if things work better and then try to research Linux versions which work with it. A cursory check showed me gentoo, and a variety of 2.6.38 kernels, therefore older kernels. Which I believe makes sense given that the GPU was released about 4-5 years ago.

Please post your thread in only one forum. Posting a single thread in the most relevant forum will make it easier for members to help you and will keep the discussion in one place. This thread is being closed because it is a duplicate.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ll-4175556064/