I hope this will not be necessary (the new laptop has gone back to the shop for checking, remedying). My new laptop has a PCIe SSD as hard drive (and only that, it's an ultrabook!). I have been trying out distros since Christmas, looking to install (probably Ubuntu although it might be Mint). Everything works very nicely, graphics, sound, webcam, wifi, french keyboard and language support - everything except the access to the SSD. No distro that I have tried even sees the disk, it might as well not be there. Even if there were a driver problem I would expect the distro or Gparted to see the disk (even if it could not access it).
To compound the problem the disk is present in the Bios but there is also Intel RST present (although it can't be doing anything since there are no SATA disks for it to be controlling). Ubuntu (and Mint) tell me to disable RST but I can't; there is no way of modifying it in the Bios, entering that sub-menu gives presence but no enable or disable option. Manjaro (Arch derivative) doesn't tell me to disable RST, just says there is no partition to install to! Asking Ubuntu (Live) to update drivers gives the information that everything is present and up to date (open-source and proprietary). The cd with the machine gives a load of Windows drivers to install (including Wifi, which works fine under Linux) but none for PCIe disks!
Am I probably right in assuming 1) that there should be a generic PCIe driver in Linux that will handle an SSD, 2) that normally the distro should see the disk even if it were unable to access it and 3) that in this case the RST shouldn't affect the installation since it has no influence in the functioning of a PCIe disk? As I say above I have left the problem in the hands of the supplier (good reason for buying locally rather than over the net) and if push comes to shove I will get them to do the installation of the OS - but it would be nice to know the opinions of others on this. The Bios was checked as up to date before I took delivery. I am suspecting a problem with the SSD (Samsung 250Go).