I'm pretty new to Linux and I'm trying to install Ubuntu 12.04 on my personal laptop, a Dell XPS 15. It has an NVIDIA GT540M with Optimus. Conveniently, there's no way to disable Optimus in the BIOS. lspci output:
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF108 [GeForce GT 540M] (rev a1)
I have bumblebee installed and it seems to work fine. I've been using glxgears from mesa-utils to test it. I'm not sure if this is normal, but running "glxgears" by itself gives:
Error: couldn't get an RGB, Double-buffered visual
But "optirun glxgears" works fine, getting framerates around 5800-6000 in 5 seconds.
My only issue is that the hardware-accelerated desktop effects aren't working. I can't enable wobbly windows or any animations. Worst of all, the Aero-like window-maximizing effect doesn't work. I haven't been able to get that effect enabled at all, even though it worked when I ran off the USB drive. I'm only assuming it's linked to my video card issues, but if there's a way to enable it please let me know!
Is it that optirun uses the NVIDIA drivers, but the intel drivers aren't setup properly? Did I miss a step?
Here's one more screenshot. It's also worth noting this is a 64 bit install of Ubuntu!