Ubuntu 11.04 broke my MacBook Pro

[Shawn Milochik]

I installed Ubuntu 11.04 on my MacBook Pro (mid-2009 version) last 
night. Upon reboot (after asking me to remove the media and press 
Enter), the computer made a loud beep, completely unlike the usual 
power-on tone.

After that, powering on the computer results in no apparent activity 
other than the white LED (the one that flashes during sleep) coming on 
and staying on. The screen remains black and there is no tone or default 
gray screen.

If I do a hard poweroff and try again I sometimes get a gray screen with 
a flashing question mark in a box.

On one of these occasions (flashing question marks) I was able to boot 
into my Ubuntu 11.04 installation media and did a fresh install. 
However, this resulted in the same result as the beginning of this e-mail.

This morning I power-cycled several times until I got the question-mark 
screen and re-installed Snow Leopard. But when I power it on I get the 
same problem -- no response but the white LED, no screen activity.

It's entirely possible that this is an unrelated hardware issue, but I 
haven't had any trouble with this machine before so it's a mighty 
coincidence if so.

Does anyone have any idea about what might cause something like this?

Shawn