Graphical corruption during Linux startup and shutdown - should I be worried?

Question

For the last month, when starting up or shutting down my laptop under Linux, I would get graphical corruption. Startup has an colour inverted, grainy rendition of what should be displayed while shutdown has a red background with all the text replaced by grey rectangles.

At the very least this affects Fedora, Ubuntu and Xubuntu. Windows is not affected. Outside of startup/shutdown the system is fine.

Should I be worrying about this?

Answer 1

I get flickering on startup sometimes. I haven't had any data loss or anything like that.

This fix from the Ubuntu Forums might work for you.

Answer 2

Try the nomodeset kernel parameter. In my case it solves the flicker and graphic madness ;)

Here my complete grub line for the kernel: linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-10-generic root=/dev/mapper/vg-lucid ro quiet splash nomodeset