Computer with Radeon HD 6310 boots up to black screen with 12.04

[Frostybeard]

When installing 12.04 into an Acer Aspire laptop that has HD Radeon 6310, it boots to a black screen.
The same is also true for Debian testing (as of about 1 week ago), OpenSuse12,
and Fedora 15 and 16. (except when selecting "basic graphics" mode)

In Ubuntu, it was not possible to select an installation mode which would not have booted
to a black screen.

It makes it impossible to install Ubuntu into the computer, because it makes it impossible to get an ip address
to use ssh, or even install ssh, let alone install the driver from AMD. You guys should check to see what Fedora
is doing differently that they have a "basic graphics" mode that works. Then after installation it is possible to
install the driver and so forth.

A bit of Googling shows that I am not alone in having problems with this video card in Linux.
I thought it would be a good idea to report it here.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/997095/+editstatus and add the package name in the text box next to the word Package.

[This is an automated message. I apologize if it reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[madbiologist (me-again)]

Firstly, instead of a "basic graphics" mode, you can boot Ubuntu with the "nomodeset" kernel boot option added to your GRUB command line. See https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2/Troubleshooting#Editing_the_GRUB_2_Menu_During_Boot

Secondly, I can boot and use Ubuntu 12.04 on a HP Compaq laptop with Radeon HD 6310 graphics (without using nomodeset), so it could be something to do with the kernel's detection/setup of your laptop's display panel. I don't suppose you know whether it is an eDP or not?