How to get Intel/nVidia combined graphics to work correctly

[yeoldelloyd]

Hi there!

I have a nVidia 310m with an Intel i5 core and Intel onboard graphics comined in my Asus Notbook. Yesterday I installed Mint and it worked fine. Then I installed the proprietary nVidia drivers from the Jockey dialog and after a restart I was forced to the Gnome 3 Fallback mode... I tried then the driver from the nVidia homepage and it completely destroyed my X settings. After that, I got no GUI at all and all tries to reestablish it were hopeless.

Today I formatted my partition and reinstalled Mint. It works fine, as I have no nVidia driver installed yet. However, I still want to get my nVidia card running under Mint. I have read that the dual-chip setup (is it "Optimus"?) causes trouble with Linux. I read, too, that there are the tools Bumblebee and Ironhide which may solve that.

Since it don't want to kill my GUI again, I have the following questions:
- Should I use Bumblebee or Ironhide?
- Which drivers do I have to install to get either of the one work properly? (without shooting my GUI!)
- Do I have to install the drivers or Bumblebee/Ironhide first?

Thanks in advance!

[xenopeek]

Moved here by moderator

To confirm the hardware being used, please share the output of the following command run on the terminal:

Code: Select all

inxi -SGxc 0

[yeoldelloyd]

Thanks for moving!

Output:

System: Host asuspro5 Kernel 3.0.0-12-generic x86_64 (64 bit gcc 4.6.1)
Desktop Gnome (Gtk 2.24.6) Distro Linux Mint 12 Lisa
Graphics: Card-1: Intel Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller bus-ID: 00:02.0
Card-2: nVidia GT218 [GeForce 310M] bus-ID: 01:00.0
X.Org 1.10.4 drivers intel unloaded: vesa,fbdev Resolution 1366x768@60.0hz
GLX Renderer Mesa DRI Intel Ironlake Mobile GLX Version 2.1 Mesa 7.11 Direct Rendering Yes

[viking777]

How to get Intel/nVidia combined graphics to work correctly

I really hate saying this, but the real answer to your question is - Install Windows 7.

Any solution that you will find here is going to be a complicated and buggy workround and nothing more.

Unfortunately hybrid graphics were created for windows 7 and later (I am told they won't even work on Vista, though I don't know for sure). Unfortunately if you are a Linux user, you made a mistake by buying state of the art hardware that is only supported by windows software. At the present moment all 'solutions' to this problem are nothing more than experimental, they might work temporarily (by disabling one card or another for example) but they will be a pain in the rear to use and won't work reliably for months (or longer).

Persuade Microsoft to release their source code for hybrid graphics software and the wonderful guys that really know Linux will have an answer within days, but sadly you have more chance of winning the lottery jackpot 10 times in a row.

I really hope I am wrong about this but I doubt that I am. If you can run your system with the open source driver as you suggested then grab that chance right now and forget about Nvidia for quite a long time.

Sorry.

[yeoldelloyd]

I appreciate your honest words and I'm using Windows 7 as main OS. I also don't want to play 3D-games on Linux. In so far I'm happy with the preinstalled drivers. However, what I want to try out is scientific computing on GPUs via openCL and I guess only the nVidia card is capable of it. I have a fast computer with a good GPU at work, but for working from home it would be a pain in the ass to do everything via SSH.

My only question is thus how I can get Bumblebee or Ironhide running somehow. If it is buggy some time, it is fine. However if you mean "regularly destroying your system" with "buggy", then I would let my fingers of that stuff...

[xenopeek]

Some info here; http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=94179

[DrHu]

This is what I see about nvidia drivers and that 310m graphics..
http://askubuntu.com/questions/37590/nv ... e-terminal

This is just the process of installing and checking nvidia driver and the few problems it can cause with inbuilt or included default drivers, eg noveau..

I also think, that by using the driver selected for the distribution, you are safer; however, if you decide to use the nvidia binary from their site, then a build against your current kernel would identify any problems starting the driver, and getting the gui/desktop running, since it is run in a terminal and you get to see any errors with starting the display..

The nvidia bin ary driver from their site requiries the desktop to be stoopped to run their script
--you also need build-essentials installed (or the kernel headers + sources)

[viking777]

However if you mean "regularly destroying your system" with "buggy", then I would let my fingers of that stuff...

I don't have any such detailed knowledge about this subject, I have only read about it online and most threads I have happened upon seem to indicate difficulties with hybrid grapics in general, though not necessarily Bumblebee or Ironhide in particular (in fact I haven't read much about those two). If you have the attitude that you don't mind it being

buggy some time

I guess you will be able to work something out, The problem is that so few people have experience of this kind of graphics card just now that getting meaningful support will be even more difficult than it usually is.

I do wish you the best of luck though, and when you sort the problem out, don't forget to come back and tell us how it is done, your experiences will be most valuable as more and more people face the same challenges in the future

[mejk]

Hi,

sorry for bumping the topic, although I guess it's not too old to be seriously bumped..

I'm fairly surprised there are no answers here from anyone who actually did manage to get bumblebee working on a laptop with optimus tech,
especially since bumblebee 3.0, if i understand it correctly, has support for proprietary nvidia drivers.

This is also a reason for me reviving the topic, maybe some of you will see it again and have something of value to add.

I have a Lenovo Z570 lap with geforce GT540M CUDA and intel graphics in optimus mode, on Mint 12 I successfully installed
bumblebee, but when i install the proprietary drivers, same thing happens, can't start X. I've google far and across but haven't found a specific solution.

Blacklisting nouveau drivers doesn't help, reinstalling latest nvidia drivers doesn't help.
Maybe there is a way to start X with Intel drivers and hope optirun would just use the discrete GPU, but can't seem to manage it, nomodeset in grub didn't work for me.

Anyway, I know this post isn't helpful much, but I hope that this topic won't go to oblivion as I believe there are many users of Mint (ubuntu, or generally linux for that matter)
who'd love to read the story of someone who did manage to get optimus running via bumblebee or a similar solution.

Point is, as much as I love Mint, I really feel stupid using my new laptop without the 3d card i've put money into, with hopes of playing some 3d games like HoN,
that work perfectly under linux on my desktop computer...

Thanks and sorry for not being of much help at the moment
I'll definitely fill you in when/if i get it running, I try and try over again each time i get some spare time on my hands..

[powerhouse]

I tried bumblebee on a live USB system today on my Dell Inspiron N5110 with a i5 CPU and an Nvidia 540M GPU. You need to first install the nvidia-current package and then bumblebee via the Ubuntu repository mentioned on the bumblebee project website. I've posted on another thread with more details, but I hope this helps.

In my case it worked as advertised using optirun <application>.

Hope I have been of help.