Thank you again for the quick and detailed response!
Short report: I went through all the step (except for using the 5.8 kernel) and still doesn't work...
SMG wrote: ⤴Thu Apr 15, 2021 9:14 am
Make sure you have the latest BIOS/UEFI for your computer. I've helped several people who found all they needed was an update there to get things working.
Just checked on the official Acer website and my BIOS is the latest version (1.18) already.
SMG wrote: ⤴Thu Apr 15, 2021 9:14 am
If the BIOS/UEFI update does not work (or there is not an update), I suggest installing the Nvidia driver and then checking to see if the nvidia-prime-applet is showing in the panel in the lower right. You probably want to be running in On-Demand mode. In that mode the line I put in blue above will have both nvidia and modesetting. You can run
inxi -Gx to see just the graphics results.
In fact there were some issues when I installed the Nvidia driver (I tried both 460 and 450, which shown in the Driver Manager). After I've selected the Nvidia driver and clicked "Apply Changes", the status bar showed up and started running... but it ended quite abruptly and then the laptop fans started. I checked with
htop and saw that a couple of processes were using the CPUs, but I forgot to write down the names. I remember one is called "frontend" and the other is something like "fixing secure boot" (forgot the exact paths for both of them).
The CPUs kept running for 10+ minutes without much happening, so I tried rebooting, but it was not allowed. And then I did
systemctl reboot -i as suggested in the terminal.
Afterwards, I tried updating the 5.4 kernel from 5.4.0-71 to 5.4.0-72 in Update Manager (just trying out other ways... as it worked with my Lubuntu 20.04.2 on the same laptop before and on another one, both still using kernel 5.4). But when I did that, it asked me to fix it manually with
dpkg --configure -a. I guess I may have broken something when I forced the reboot...
but long story short: I think I've successfully applied the nvidia-driver-450 now, but it still doesn't work (see below).
SMG wrote: ⤴Thu Apr 15, 2021 9:14 am
There are currently some bugs in a few files which is causing the nvidia-prime-applet not to show/work properly. After you install the Nvidia driver and reboot, if you run
inxi -Gx and see
N/A for the Nvidia driver and the nvidia-prime-applet is not in your panel, then your system files are probably affected. The fourth post in this thread
Disappearing Nvidia drivers :Prime the prime suspect? describes a one line code fix (editing line 34) for a know bug with some of the graphics files related to Nvidia.
That should bring back the applet after you reboot. You then can switch to On-Demand mode and reboot and should see the nvidia driver loaded and hopefully all your external screens will then have displays. I think the combo of the missing driver and not being set up in On-demand mode may be why the fix from the other thread did not work.
I went through this and changed line 34 (basically adding "|| true" to kind of bypassing the condition, right?). It did bring back the applet, but even after switching to On-Demand mode and reboot, I still don't see the nvidia driver.
Here is the output from
inxi -Gx
Code: Select all
Graphics: Device-1: Intel Iris Plus Graphics G7 vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: i915 v: kernel bus ID: 00:02.0
Device-2: NVIDIA GP107M [GeForce MX350] vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: N/A bus ID: 2b:00.0
Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.9 driver: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz
OpenGL: renderer: Mesa Intel Iris Plus Graphics (ICL GT2) v: 4.6 Mesa 20.2.6 direct render: Yes
SMG wrote: ⤴Thu Apr 15, 2021 9:14 am
You also have very new equipment and it may run better using the 5.8 kernel which is available in Update Manager. If you want to try it, open Update Manager. Select View > Linux Kernels and click Continue. Make sure 5.8 is selected on the left panel and then click the top-most option on the right panel. An "Install" button will appear. Install the kernel and then reboot for it to become active.
As I said above, I'd like to try other fixes before adventuring to kernel 5.8, as it used to work with kernel 5.4 in lubuntu 20.04.2...
Do you have any other suggestions? Or did I mess up anything in the process?
Alan
), and it even worked on another laptop running the same version of Lubuntu.
