Did it refuse to install, or refuse to boot? I've seen Linux distros that couldn't boot (from CD), but it worked after disabling certain hardware detection in the boot options.
Starts to boot from USB drive, and than just halts and does nothing, just showing blank screen.
I know how to handle bios and boot options, but this was not the case here and usb was detected.
Weird, never had that so far. Didn't it tell you what the issue is? Like is usually the case with verbose Linux OS..
Default is Btrfs, but it asks you during installation what you want to use.
Something similar happened once with debian os, but there was a clear message for unsupported hardware, so I just used nonfree version and it worked like a charm.
So you are using Btrfs or Ext4... and did you notice any difference, especially running Bitcoin node?