Hi,
I have been trying to get OpenSuse installed on my laptop, but the LiveDVD always drops to the GRUB command line. My laptop is a Dell Inspiron 7537 and I am using UEFI mode. I’ve been able to install Fedora and Ubuntu just fine using SecureBoot, as well as Arch and a few others with SecureBoot turned off. OpenSuse doesn’t work with SecureBoot on or off. Can anyone help?
Thank you,
D
Hi,
Let us make some facts, first off all there is no LiveDVD (at least not officially) there never was but I’m not sure if there will be in the future 
There is a LiveCD installer OTOH.
Now when you say GRUB command line, what does it looks like? is there any error message?
If you are trying to install using the DVD (not live) then it should bring the installer if you choose the install option.
The only thing i can think that will give you a blank screen is a hardware issue most probably with video/graphics card driver being buggy.
By “LiveDVD”, I am guessing that you are referring to either the live KDE iso or the live Gnome iso, burned to a DVD.
That is supposed to work. I have not had any problems with UEFI and optical media on my Dell Inspiron 600, though I normally use a USB for installs.
“Drop to GRUB command line” should indicate a problem loading the kernel or the “initrd” file from the DVD. So one possibility is a bad DVD burn, or a DVD alignment problem that is occuring on that system. If you have Windows on that laptop, you could try using it to burn the DVD. That way, it is created on the same device that will read it. Or it might be easier to use a USB flash drive for the iso.
The live KDE and live Gnome iso images are too big for a CD, so you have to use a DVD if you want optical media. Quite naturally, some folk call that a “liveDVD”.
Okay, it’s an installer, not a LiveDVD. Anyway, yes there seems to be a problem loading the kernel which is why the GRUB shell comes up. I have downloaded both the full installer, the KDE installer, and two of the Tumbleweed installers. All have this same effect. I can take the same USB drive to my desktop and run the installer just fine. As I previously stated, other distros’ installers work. Not sure what it is about OpenSuse and this particular laptop. I do not have Windows, but the image was copied to USB using ‘did if=<ISO_IMG> of=/dev/sdb bs=4M && sync’. I was going to read the GRUB manual to try to see if I could determine a fix from the GRUB shell, but thought I’d try the forum first.
Ok, i have not noticed that. too much packages on the LiveCD now?
It is LiveDVD you can run from it or install from it but it only contains the one major desktop. The the only cd size iso is for the rescue version.
To the OP
If you get a shell then the kernel loads. maybe it is a video problem. what video is on that machine? Though it could be any number of things. Do you get to the first menu?
Did you check the checksums on the iso down load? No it works on other machines so that is not it LOL
I think it is called “software bloat”.
I installed my first linux system with a floppy. Things were smaller back then. (I probably had a huge memory size of 16M).
That should have worked.
There used to be advice to run the “isohybrid” command on DVD images. If you did that, it might cause such problems. The current iso images are already fully hybrid (so ready for USB).
It does not even get to the menu. It goes straight tho the GRUB shell. My video is i915 (Haswell on-chip), so I really doubt the video driver is an issue. Again, I am able to install successfully on my desktop PC using the same image, so the image is fine.
I don’t know then. grub not running right does not happen often. try booting it in legacy mode (don’t install it just see if that get to the menu)