What do you know? I tried booting the 64bit version of Quantal from a Live USB multiple times, and the splash screen consistently appeared. Now I wasn't able to check the logs because the screen would then freeze (as I mentioned in my last post, that may be a bug in Quantal's graphics).
However, I then downloaded the 64 bit version of Precise, and sure enough, the splash screen appears every time, and both nouveau & Unity 3d load, with the AC plugged in. dmesg shows the 6ms (instead of 30ms) gap near line 300, and the GPU is being booted around line 600. I suppose I should reinstall with the 64 bit version (which I was planning to do at some point anyway) to be sure, but it looks like that may resolve the bug for me. I guess it may be something to do specifically with the PAE version of the kernel. If you want to me keep helping narrow down what's going on, I wouldn't mind, but if you want to close the bug as resolved, I can do that and make a note about the fix somewhere if anyone else is having problems (here/the wiki/the forums?) I'll still let you know how the fresh install turns out. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1009312 Title: GPU loads unreliably, possible kernel timeout To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1009312/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs