Installing elementary OS onto a System76 Onyx Laptop

Question

I am having trouble installing elementary OS 5, the latest stable ISO from the website onto my Onyx Laptop (Core i7, GTX-1070, 4K screen).

I can boot to the OS on the thumb drive (the test drive option), but when I try to install it from the thumb drive or from the test drive boot all I get is a elementary OS logo then the screen turns on and off repeatedly for a few minutes then stays off and I never get to the desktop.

If I wait till the display stays off, then hit the power button I get the elementary logo again and it does a regular shutdown.

Not sure what's going on here, or what to try. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Are you trying to install Loki or Juno? I have Loki installed on a near identical Oryx Pro and it works pretty well. In fact, it's one of the few Linux installations that works well on the Oryx Pro, although there will be some teething issues. (Be sure to install the System 76 driver package.)

If you can't get Juno to install, try installing Loki. You will also want to install Touchpad Indicator to disable the touchpad when typing. I don't know if Juno fixes this or not, but it's irritating.

I tried POP OS from System 76 and really hated it. Elementary OS is a much better solution.

You will find with Elementary OS on the 4k display you will have to tweak a lot of things to get it to look right. I've since regretted getting the 4k display.

Note: Do not use any of the Xubuntu releases (including Ubuntu Studio.) They do not play well with the System 76 4k display for some reason.

Hope that was helpful.