I’ve been trying to setup Fedora on my Inspiron 14 Plus for the entire day to no avail. The grub menu opens as expected, but selecting any option from there just leaves the screen black with a static cursor at the top left (no blinking).
I’ve tried to do many things, but the issue still persists.
Turned off secure boot
Disabled Windows Autoplay
Disabled Bitlocker
Verified the iso (checksum)
Tried setting up fedora on another device with the same bootable drive (it works)
Tried different drives
Tried older versions of fedora
Disabled media check
Disabling quiet mode still shows 0 logs
Used different flashing tools (BalenaEtcher, Rufus, Fedora Media Writer)
Tried booting in basic graphics mode
I am hoping that someone can help me debug this because I really want to switch from Windows 11 to Linux
Make sure your systems BIOS/UEFI firmware is up-to-date.
If you have another *nix system up and running, try wiping the USB and re-writing the *.iso using the dd command. I know Rufus is capable of writing in dd mode, but those GUIs might write the image in a way that your laptop doesn’t like. The commands to this are…
I would also suggest what Brian said further up. Fedora 40 is out pf date (no more support). While I can’t say that this could be the issue it is worth trying it but with the method Brian said, using dd.
Another approach though a bit of an overkill but still worth trying since you already tried a lot is to use your USB media and install ventoy. Then use netboot (Introduction | netboot.xyz). Essentially this will PXE boot various operating system installers or utilities from a single tool over the network. Which is a bit different than the plain, yet fastest way of installing most OSs. I think it is worth a try but after you try the dd approach of Brian.
Also something else. When you are in a situation like this and after having tried so many things you might feel overwhelmed. Take a step back relax go out take your mind off from the installation process and come back fresh. Also hopefully welcome to Linux and embrace the journey.
I do not have another *nix system unfortunately. I could set it up on my other device but that seems a little overkill to eventually set it up on this device.
This is useful. This could mean that likely something went wrong with the fedora iso in the usb stick during the creation. Whenever you get back to it try a different usb with the latest fedora iso. Out of curiosity try an iso from another distro (ubuntu) to test if at least you get into the live iso environment.
Yeah I already tried that with the latest version of fedora. And I tried an ubuntu iso yesterday which is how I found out that ubuntu does run on that device without issues
I have the same problem too, but it’s working with the old BIOS 1.12.0 version. (firmware update tested up to 1.14.0 with Fedora 42).
As a result, it is impossible to update my BIOS.
