Just as I started to believe that Ubuntu had matured to become a super-stable and grandma-friendly OS, I got an unexpected black screen on boot of Ubuntu 10.04 on a Dell Latitude D400. After some googling I have found a solution that works:

On boot, hit the `e’ button when the grub menu shows up. Then add the following after “quiet splash”: [i915.modeset=1]{style=“font-family: monospace;”}

If this works and you get into the system, you can do this procedure to change the grub loader permanently:

  • [sudo gedit /etc/default/grub]{style=“font-family: monospace;”}
  • Find this line: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash” and replace with: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash i915.modeset=1”
  • Finally do a sudo update-grub to re-generate the grub menu

I hope this can help save an hour or two for other people encountering the same problem.