I picked up a nifty Dell Latitude c840 notebook on Ebay for around $185, nice. So I get it and decide to setup Linux Mint (based on Ubuntu 7.10). After the install completes I then have the bright idea to setup the restricted drivers to get the 3D acceleration working (so I can play with Compiz later) and find that I am presented with a lovely black screen after reboot.

yay! black screen of nothing! yay!

So I troll around on the net and discover it's some sort of problem with the Nvidia NV17 (GeForce4 440 Go) chip and the way the EDID's work on the Samsung 1600x1200 LCD, or somesuch silliness.

Anyhow to make it work( read = "I would like to actually see the screen!") reboot and select the "recovery mode" kernel and then do this:

nano -w /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia-kernel-nkc

# add this to the end of the file
options nvidia NVreg_SoftEDIDs=0 NVreg_Mobile=0

Save file, reboot and click on my Google ads ;)

Enjoy!