Are your graphics dead in Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic)? This hack might help

“To test whether or not the fix works, when you get to the GRUB
screen, hit esc to stop the boot, then go arrow down to the kernel
boot line, type e to edit it and add the following to the end (or
after the ro … both work for me):

i915.modeset=0

“Then type b to boot.

“If your computer boots into Ubuntu 9.10 and you now have a
working display, make this change permanent by adding that same
line to the GRUB entries for Ubuntu permanently by using your sudo
privileges to edit the GRUB configuration file,
/boot/grub/menu.lst”

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