I bought a cheapo laptop with a Celeron N4020 CPU to have a Linux machine I don’t mind breaking, so i can continue to learn. I use EndeavourOS on my other, more modern laptop since last July.
After installing from the latest ISO via USB, I get a black screen on the next boot. I see the typical scroll of info as the machine loads up, then when I expect to be greeted with a login screen for Xfce, it’s just a black screen. No cursor, and ctrl + alt + f* don’t work for a terminal. I do not see anything relevant in the logs. Not sure how to move forward, but don’t want to give up and just install another distro. I want to figure out what broke and fix it; but need help! Cheers.
Some more info. I’m using systemd, only running Linux; no other OS. I’ve tried installing without a DE to see if i could at least just get a terminal. That had the same result. Tried Gnome and KDE installs; same result. Filesystem is ext4. No encryption, for now. Live ISO loads and functions great.
I’ve solved this problem. I didn’t know where to start with EndeavourOS. The problem was with the display. It uses an inexpensive tablet display that has a default orientation of portrait mode. The EndeavourOS Xfce (and other DEs I tried and even when I tried no graphical environment) install must have been using a modeline that was incompatible with my display. I had no idea where to start. So, I installed Arch which I correctly assumed would at least let me operate the laptop in portrait mode while I sorted it out (sideways from my point of view since it is a laptop display). Eventually, to rotate the display to “landscape mode,” I figured out how to see compatible modelines from my display in /var/log/Xorg.0.log and then set the one I preferred in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-Monitor.conf (had to create the file) and set it to rotate the screen. That file’s contents, in my case:
I also set a systemd bootloader entry of “video=efifb fbcon=rotate:1” in /boot/loader/entries/.conf. This sets my console in the correct orientation at boot.
This all took a lot of troubleshooting and black screens of death before I finally got it all sorted. And, I learned some vanilla Arch in the process. Neat. Hope this helps someone else out who comes across similar issues.
Yeah, I have a 4080 Windows 11 gaming rig, a preordered AMD AI 350 Framework 13 that I plan to run EndeavourOS on, and an older Razer Blade Stealth 13 that has run EndeavourOS since July, 2024. But, this little no-name laptop is fun to mess around on, and not have to worry about downtime/losing data. Been learning a ton already. Now, to figure out how to configure power management, get rid of screen tearing, install a basic firewall (that should be easy’ish), etc., etc. Hah. Cheers.