Thursday 25 April 2013

HOW-TO install nvidia 319.12 drivers on Ubuntu 13.04 [Dual Screen with HDMI working!]

Hi there,

Just wanted to confirm that I was - finally @2am today - be able to install the latest nvidia 319.12[beta] drivers that now support Optimus natively (no need for bumblebee anymore).

Thanks a lot to pogopuschel (from the nvidia forums) who figured out the steps to be able to make it!

The most important feature it enables (at least for me) is that now you can have dual screen working if you're using an HDMI external monitor (VGA was already working out of the box), so after frustration comes a big relief !

I will try to put together an HOW-TO asap but for the impatients I invite you to check his thread on the nvidia forums :

https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/539322/linux/blank-screen-with-319-12-on-optimus-laptop/3/?offset=38

UPDATE : in fact pogopuschel has already put together the HOW-TO here :

http://paste.ubuntu.com/5601226 

UPDATE (30/04) : seems like there is no need to downgrade anymore (check the nvidia thread). I have to test that asap.

Also, I wanted to mention that in my case the setup is only working if I use an external HDMI Monitor. In that case I'm able to login (with no .xsessionrc) on the HDMI Monitor and after login executing this xrandr command will enable my laptop display :

xrandr --setprovideroutputsource modesetting NVIDIA-0
(at this stage intel or modesetting are both working for me)

Good news is that dual screen is now working but I couldn't get it working (black screen) yet when using laptop display only... :-(

Cheers!

Monday 15 April 2013

Nvidia 319.12 drivers and Optimus

Finally it seems that Nvidia has released Linux beta drivers that include support for Optimus and RandR 1.4 according to this article :

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTM0NzE

That's a really good news since it brings hope for all Optimus laptop owners to have native support of the Nvidia GPU including HDMI output and so on...

Can't wait to test this along with Ubuntu 13.04 when they will both be stable/released!