Comment 8 for bug 952574

Having the similar issues here. Basically, using the nouveau drivers, one HAS to boot with "nomodeset" otherwise you'll hang on a blank screen or in my case a screen with a couple of colored lines. BUT, nomodeset practically de-activates the driver and you'll fail DRM and end up with VESA capabilities. So this represents an un-usable system for many people (not sure which cards are affected). So what, no more nouveau? or is there some other workaround I've missed?

And for me, for some silly reason the proprietary drivers fail to properly recognize my monitor resolutions and I'm stuck with 600x400 which is unusable. I think this is an unrelated issue though.

Background:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1613132
http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/TroubleShooting#Xorg_fails_to_start_with_.22.28EE.29_.5Bdrm.5D_failed_to_open_device.22