[sclug] Disabling graphics card in Linux

[Philip Hands]

On Sun, 17 Apr 2011 12:53:30 +0100, Matt Cox <spudgun79 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have a laptop which dual-boots Ubuntu with Windows Vista.  It has a
> discrete Nvidia 8600M GS graphics card which are notorious for faults of
> which mine is no exception.  The machine is only a couple of years old, but
> out of warranty.  The symptom of this is the machine hard locks at boot at
> the point it tries to initialise the graphics card.
> 
> I've found a way to get round it in Widows by booting to Safe Mode, which it
> allows me to do as it only uses standard VGA, and disable the graphics card
> in Device Manager.  Then I can boot Windows normally, albeit without any 3D
> accleration.
> 
> Is there any way I can achieve the same thing with Linux?

You should be able to bring it up in single user mode, or rescue mode,