installation DVD does not work on my system

[Featherfoot]

I recently trashed my system and was forced to rebuild from scratch. I downloaded LinuxMint 18.3, built a DVD and attempted to boot from it. It got as far as the menu. Then the screen went blank and the DVD whirred for awhile with no screens visible again.

I took the install .iso and used unetbootin to build a USB drive. That one did the same thing, so it's not a DVD problem. I then downloaded it again with the same result.

As a point of interest I downloaded several other installation .iso files, including the Mint 18.3 KDE distribution with the same result. I poked through old installation DVD's and was able to boot from an old Knoppix 6.3 DVD but not the new one.

As a point of reference, though, I have an old LinuxMint 18.1 installation DVD which I was able to use to rebuild my system.

I'm forced to conclude that the software that builds live DVD's and installations has a serious problem.

My concern is that if anything happens to my Mint 18.1 DVD I am in trouble.

My system is a white box, which a Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3 motherboard. My graphics card is an Nvidia GTX-460. My CPU is an AMD Phenom II X4970. I have 16 Gb of RAM. My disk system contains 2 1 TB drives running as RAID1. I also have a 256 Gb SSD which was not used.

[kc1di]

Hello Featherfoot and Welcome to Linux Mint Forums,

I believe the problem is with your Nvidia card. They need some special care. follow the recommendation on the release notes found here:
https://linuxmint.com/rel_sylvia_cinnamon.php
Scroll down the the section on Solving freezes during the boot sequence.
Good Luck.

[Featherfoot]

You are right, it does work.

I can only say that I had the same problem on many linux live install DVD's. If any had the --nomodeset option set by default, I would have installed that system. At that point, you need an installer that works.

[kc1di]

The problem is not the installer but the video card driver which is propitiatory and the manufacturer though they support lInux quite well will not release their drivers for
open source to be able to work on them and thus because of license issues they can not be installed by default. and Not all cards need the nomodeset and that it will just
mess up some other cards install it is not included by default. Such is the world we live in. In any event glad you got it going and hope you will enjoy Linux Mint

[JerryF]

Is it possible for the installer to recognize that there's a video card which needs the ‘nomodeset' switch?

[kc1di]

Is it possible for the installer to recognize that there's a video card which needs the ‘nomodeset' switch?

I would suppose it to be possible, but you'd have to take that up with the Ubuntu installer team as Mint basically use Ubuntu's installer system. I'm not sure how complicated that would be. But it's a good suggestion, some distros such at PCLinuxos and I believe Manjaro load the drivers for those card by default there may be others also.

[jglen490]

Just remember that the GPL license disallows a default position of loading non-open source software. Such software can be requested by the user, and there is an option in the installer process to do so.

Maybe some Linux distros are less strict on that point.