Comment 104 for bug 86666

I had the same problem on Kubuntu alt amd64 w/ nVidia 8600. But I was able to fix it. It seems the vesafb module is needed--but it is blacklisted. Here's what I did:

add "vesafb" to /etc/initramfs-tools/modules
comment out "blacklist vesafb" in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-framebuffer
generate modules.dep: sudo depmod -a
try loading it: sudo modprobe vesafb
sudo update-initramfs -u
reboot

These instructions are based on http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=622018 however he was also trying to set up fbcon which I don't think is need to fix the problem. In my case I used hwinfo --framebuffer and edited /boot/grub/menu.lst to run usplash at 1920x1200x24. The posts above talk about these grub and hwinfo, which is nice, but doesn't fix the problem.

PS: I'm guessing that vesafb was blacklisted for a reason, so this may not work for everyone... if not you may need to remove splash from the default options in /boot/grub/menu.lst... text boot messages are better then a black screen.

Cheers,
~Thomas