CUDA incompatible with my gcc version

I have troubles compiling some of the examples shipped with CUDA SDK. I have installed the developers driver (version 270.41.19) and the CUDA toolkit, then finally the SDK (both the 4.0.17 version).

Initially it didn't compile at all giving:

error -- unsupported GNU version! gcc 4.5 and up are not supported!

I found the line responsible in 81:/usr/local/cuda/include/host_config.h and changed it to:

//#if __GNUC__ > 4 || (__GNUC__ == 4 && __GNUC_MINOR__ > 4)
#if __GNUC__ > 4 || (__GNUC__ == 4 && __GNUC_MINOR__ > 6)

from that point on I got only a few of the examples to compile, it stops with:

In file included from /usr/include/c++/4.6/x86_64-linux-gnu/bits/gthr.h:162:0,
             from /usr/include/c++/4.6/ext/atomicity.h:34,
             from /usr/include/c++/4.6/bits/ios_base.h:41,
             from /usr/include/c++/4.6/ios:43,
             from /usr/include/c++/4.6/ostream:40,
             from /usr/include/c++/4.6/iterator:64,
             from /usr/local/cuda/include/thrust/iterator/iterator_categories.h:38,
             from /usr/local/cuda/include/thrust/device_ptr.h:26,
             from /usr/local/cuda/include/thrust/device_malloc_allocator.h:27,
             from /usr/local/cuda/include/thrust/device_vector.h:26,
             from lineOfSight.cu:37:
/usr/include/c++/4.6/x86_64-linux-gnu/bits/gthr-default.h:251:1: error: pasting         "__gthrw_" and "/* Android's C library does not provide pthread_cancel, check for
`pthread_create' instead.  */" does not give a valid preprocessing token
make[1]: *** [obj/x86_64/release/lineOfSight.cu.o] Error 1

As some of the examples compile I reckon this is not a driver problem, but rather must have something to do with an unsupported gcc version. Downgrading is not an option as gcc4.6 has a whole system as a dependency at this point...