Installation of Ubuntu 16.04 from a USB drive freezes

I fought with the same problem. I have a brand new Asus GL553VW. I wanted to install Linux but I had to face a lot of problems and still have some. The beauty is that it's a gamer laptop and doesn't really have support for Linux... So, I will write down my past problems and the solution for them.

I had the same freezing issue during the installation. You should go to the grub, where you choose the booting operating system. If it doesn't appear by default, you should press Shift until you see it.

  • Then choose the Ubuntu, or Install Ubuntu (it depends, you will see it hopefully), go to it with the arrows and press the 'e' key.
  • Here go to the line which contains quiet splash at the end and add acpi=off after these words.
  • Then press F10 to boot with these settings.

The installer didn't freeze for me after that. However, you should be aware of that it changes only for the initial boot, after it, when you want to install Linux, you need to change it again.

The next problem I faced was that after booting, in one minute the fans started to scream and work at maximum speed. Other was that the shutdown freezed and I had to press the shutdown key longly. The solution to both of these was to install nvidia. Type in terminal:

sudo apt-get install nvidia

Press tab twice and see which nvidia is the newest. For example, it will look like:

sudo apt-get install nvidia-352

Hopefully it will be the same for you.

Next problem: the fn keys. Only the volume control worked with it. Unfortunately I haven't find an exact solution yet. I'm trying, but it would need a driver, which I'm afraid doesn't exist. However, I set my shortcuts in settings and after that, at least for instance the brightness control works (but with another key combination). The only bug which I faced then was that the keyboard backlight doesn't work whatever I do (in Windows, it's perfect after the installation of drivers from the given CD). I'm trying to solve it. Hopefully I will find a way to bring it to life. I haven't found any other bugs yet, and I hope I won't. I haven't started to use it really...

Hope I could help you! :)


My situation (HP zBook ZBook 15 G3) is to disable the Disable Hybrid Graphics in BIOS, no need more GRUB editing.

  1. Press F10 (for HP) immediately and repeatedly when the system boot, and you will go to BIOS setup utility.
  2. Go to Advanced -> Built-In Device Options (or Device Configurations in G1 and G2)
  3. Select Discrete Graphics for Graphics. (Default is auto), and save and exit. discrete Graphics

What I've done additional is enable the Virtualization Technology and disable the Fast Boot.

  1. BIOS setup utility -> Advanced -> System Options:
    • check: Virtualization Technology (VTx)
    • check: Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VTd) vtx&vtd
  2. BIOS setup utility -> Advanced -> Boot Options:
    • uncheck: Fast Boot fastboot

By the way, I didn't disable the Secure Boot Configuration like some of post shows. Here my settings for your reference: secure boot conf

Here more references:

  • Host: HP zBook ZBook 15 G3
  • Ubuntu OS: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
  • Using USB install. USB image created from OSX, etcher.app.