White screen on boot on ubuntu

Ubuntu upgrade to maverick on a dell C640 has a white screen on boot.

1.) Plugged in ethernet cable (wireless doesn't work)
2.) grub recovery mode (netroot: root shell with networking)
3.) Running startx show abi mismatch errors + unable to load drivers
4.) Ran aptitude, it updated some xserver packages
5.) X now starts but it's all trippy colors + low resolution (not using radeon driver)
6.) X also won't let me use keyboard or mouse
7.) Remove and install xserver-xorg-video-radeon
8.) apt-get remove --purge xserver-xorg-core
9.) apt-get install xserver-xorg-core
10.) X starts fine now.

Whatever, ubuntu.