Updating the thread in case someone with same problem drops here. After trying to understand the problem a little better, it came up that the problem could be due to some conflict between the Nvidia GPU and the intel one. Since my system does not support Optimus, I tried the opposite suggestion and added the nomodeset kernel parameter. That apparently solved the issue. No idea of the true cause, but that was enough to get the laptop to work for me.
Thanks again for the suggestions.