Booting from Usb

[Trakyan]

Hi there, thanks in advance for any help.

I've been wanting to try out Linux for ages but have had a number of issues, I solved a few recently but hit another brick wall.
I've tried this with a couple of distros and so far got the furthest using Debian and Sparky (a debian derivative). I burned the ISO's onto a usb, plugged it in, told my computer to boot via usb and it did. Then it brings me to a screen with a list of options like boot, safe boot etc.
It looked like this, though it didn't have exactly the same options, I believe it had more than two options.
https://i1.wp.com/srvfail.com/wp-conten ... n8grub.png

The problem is that when I select any of the options, the screen flashes as if refreshing, but it stays on the same menu. I haven't been able to get any further and the only way 'out' of this loop is to do a hard reset by holding the power button.

If it helps I have a netbook with an intel atom baytrail SoC. From what I've read these are notoriously difficult to get working as they have a 32 bit UEFI and a 64 bit processor.

Thanks.

[dilberts_left_nut]

Don't know about the UEFI issues, but that looks like the grub bootloader on an installed system.
What ISO did you download?

[Trakyan]

I downloaded the 'small installation image' from https://www.debian.org/distrib/
The menu I get looks similar but has some different options. I can't get a screenshot for obvious reasons, though.

[dilberts_left_nut]

So, by "similar", do you mean it has the same text, or is the same colour?

[Trakyan]

If it helps, since I just read something that suggests I've been doing it wrong.
I'm using Rufus and burning an ISO image to the USB stick, just read something that suggests I should be burning a DD image. Could anyone clear this up?

[dilberts_left_nut]

This might be good to read:
https://d-i.debian.org/manual/en.i386/apa.html

Also, you may want to use the current testing installer here:
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/weekl ... 64/iso-cd/

Stretch is due for release in a few weeks and will likely better support newer hardware than Jessie - in particular the newer installer is supposed to handle your 32bit UEFI is a 664bit system by default.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

I'm using Rufus and burning an ISO image to the USB stick, just read something that suggests I should be burning a DD image

Yes, Rufus must be set to "DD" [sic] mode to burn the image correctly.

You can also try USBWriter, that has no confusing knobs with which to break the process:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/usbwriter/

For the record, Debian jessie already supports mixed-bitness UEFI systems but a BayTrail device would need stretch to work at it's best.

[Trakyan]

Should I set the partition scheme to anything special? I read it should be GPT rather than MBR for UEFI (or at least baytrail). Same sort of question for the file system, I read its should be FAT32.

Thanks for all the help so far, I'll start some testing to see if it works soon.

[Trakyan]

Just tried it, showed me
error: no suitable video mode found
booting in blind mode

some visual artifacts then start to show up along the top border of the screen. At this point it seems to be frozen, this happens no matter whether I choose 'install' or 'graphical install'.

[Lysander]

Just tried it, showed me
error: no suitable video mode found
booting in blind mode

some visual artifacts then start to show up along the top border of the screen. At this point it seems to be frozen, this happens no matter whether I choose 'install' or 'graphical install'.

I think you're going to have to do a little more research. Just typing "error: no suitable video mode found booting in blind mode" into Google got me a lot of results. Clearly many people over various Linux distros have had the same issue.

I would recommend reading around rather than expecting people to hold your hand here through it. Doing so has the added benefit of giving you the skills to search widely for an answer rather than trying to localise your problem to one forum.

Try it with rEFInd maybe?