Sounds much like my weekend rebuilding my desktop after ati/amd graphics 
driver upgrade apparently broke irrevocably my ability to boot with 
debian in the initrd.  Even single-user would crash prior to boot.  :\

Oddly I found a live-cd of mint, fedora, or ubuntu would work ok happily 
outputting across my 6 displays (with glx), but using the open-source 
radeon driver after install I'd install/reboot to get that black screen 
effect, seemingly crashing the kernel behind it.  Lots of reports of 
"black screen radeon", not much how to fix it that worked for me.  I 
later realized the intel graphics would take over, even though probing 
the radeon, and really just annoyed me as it works great in a live cd, 
but couldn't get anything else to work properly beyond.

Probably similar what you're seeing if you have an integrated graphics 
and/or external video card.  Blacklisting the offender might work, but 
seems odd I don't have this issue once the proprietary amd blob is loaded.

Side note - after cursing lmde for a few days, and finding fedora 
install as broken as ubuntu/mint installers for raid/lvm setups, I tried 
a netinstall of ubuntu 14.04 which surprisingly did NOT suck like even 
their server iso's missing disk setup features.  Try that with a text 
install, and just "apt-get install ubuntu-desktop" after.

Is it just me, or are all linux installers basketcases these days?  
Seems not...

-mb


On 10/06/2014 12:15 AM, Mark Jarvis wrote:
>
> For those of you old enough to remember the Li'l Abner comic strip, 
> I'm beginning to feel like Joe Btfsplk, the hard luck character who 
> had a small, dark, rain cloud perpetually hovering over his head.
>
> I downloaded the latest 64 bit Ubuntu ISO and burned the image to 
> disk. Booting from the DVD, it appeared to start, then went to a blank 
> screen with a small icon at the bottom. After 5 or 6 minutes, I got 
> tired of waiting and pushed the power button. Skipping some of the 
> trials, it had apparently altered the boot order in setup to boot from 
> the CD/DVD drive if there was something in it--not that I mind, I 
> prefer that. anyway. If the DVD was in the drive it would boot from it 
> and display some text options. One of the options said (approximately) 
> run Ubuntu without installing.  I selected that option and pressed 
> enter as instructed. Blank screen time.
>
> I have an HP box with a Samsung Monitor (1920 x 1080).
>
> First Knoppix, then Ubuntu. These used to be my sure fire, never fail 
> distros.
>
> FWIW, an old Ubuntu 9.10 (64 bit) CD loads & works fine in live CD mode.
>
> I'd sure like to know what the problem is. Any suggestions gratefully 
> accepted.
>
>
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