For TL;DR people, here are the steps: Prepare a Ubuntu Desktop 18.04 LTS Live USB Start your machine with USB plugged in and select EFI boot Hit e to edit Try Ubuntu without installing entry and add nomodeset to the kernel command line Verify this version of Ubuntu works with your broken machine Install Ubuntu normally and reboot and select EFI boot again (don’t boot into the installed Ubuntu yet and you can’t) Hit c for the grub command-line Find the partition where Ubuntu is installed (assuming (hd2,gpt2), more details from Marco Miglierina ) grub> set root=(hd2,gpt2) grub> ls -l (hd2,gpt2) to find the partition UUID grub> linux /boot/vmlinuz-x.

After upgrading to Mac OSX High Sierra, I start to see split and blue screens on my MacBook Pro (early 2011). This normally indicates a failed graphics card on my old laptop. I send it to Apple store and the diagnostic results confirm it is indeed the discrete graphics card problem. Unfortunately, they don’t have any spare parts for my vintage model. Many people are having the same issues from a simple Google search, like stackexchange and macrumors posts.