How to install ubuntu 16.04 along side windows 10 on a precision tower 7810 xeon with an nVidia GPU

This is just FYI since it took me many hours work over 3 days to figure it out. Problems included a scrambled display and no internet connectivity.

1. Boot from livecd of Ubuntu 16.04.3 x64
2. Hit during purple screen with a keyboard logo at the bottom
3. Select language with the arrow keys then press enter.
4. Press F6 to get a kernel options selection
5. select NOMODESET (if not visible, select "more options" or something like that.)
NOMODESET will appear in a list with a checkbox.

If you try to get it to install without the NONMODESET, the display will be scrambled and it is impossible to do anything.

To achieve internet connectivity under Ubuntu 16.04 on a dell precision tower 7810:
In a terminal window:

1. sudo nano /etc/default/grub

Find the line:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="NOMODESET"

Change it to

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="NOMODESET net.ifnames=0 biosdevname=0"

2. sudo reboot

3. login, open a terminal window

4. ip -a

The output should include the line

2: enp0s25:

Note that different machines might have different names there, e.g. enp0005 or eth0

5. sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

6. sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

Change the lines

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

to

auto lo enp0s25
iface lo inet loopback
inface enp0s25 inet dhcp

7. sudo service network-manager restart

This fixed the connectivity problem for me.

Also to get out of the 640x480 display mode, I did this:

1. logout of Ubuntu
2. simultaneously:
3. sudo service lightdm stop
4. sudo apt-get purge nvidia-*
5. sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
6. sudo apt-get update
7. sudo apt-get install nvidia-384 # or which ever driver number is current
8. sudo service lightdm start