Comment 40 for bug 12637

Just booted the Hardy alpha 4 live CD (Kubuntu amd_64), and the LiveCD session booted up normally, without dimming the LCD!
  Since this is a working laptop now, I don't want to do a complete reinstall with the hardy alpha. Is there a way I can install just the kernel package from the hardy CD, and have it be a grub option in my normal Gutsy system? (actually ubuntustudio 7.10 w/ kernel 2.6.22-14-rt)
  I tried opening the liveCD in synaptic, but the only linux-image packages it finds on the CD appear to be older than the kernel I have installed in Gutsy...
  I notice from the package descriptions in adept that Hardy is using a 'generic' kernel for both x86 and x86_64, as well as UP and SMP. The plain x86 kernel in 7.04 didn't exhibit this problem, so is the problem now fixed, or is this 'generic' kernel really an x86 32bit kernel under the covers?

Under Gutsy, the symptoms seem to be:

'Kernel is active' at bottom of screen
'kernel mapping tables...' at bottom of screen
then
[PCI].... appears at the top of the screen, and the screen dimms, almost simultaneously, I can't really tell which is first.