My Lenovo T420S has a discrete graphic card with nvidia optimus technology. What I'm basically trying to achieve is the following:
- use a second display - connected via DVI/viewport - at work (VGA is blurry)
- achieve a moderate to good battery performance while travelling (2 hours)
As far as I figured out, I have the following options:
- disable Optimus, use internal graphics exclusively
- disable Optimus, use nvidia exclusively
- enable Optimus, use bumblebee (homepage) / ironhide
(1) disqualifies as I read (and experienced) that DVI / viewport is technically not usable via internal graphics
(2) haven't really tried so far, just a quick test-install that booted into a black screen after I added the nvidia drivers :-(
(3) followed this blog, used bumblebee instead of ironhide. Bumblebee worked (I can see impressive FPS on glxgears), but I did not get the second display to be recognized. I also felt lost in the nvidia-driver-hell and had no chance to run nvidia-xconfig, simply because it was not installed. No idea if a second display is supposed to be recognized out of the box? Do I need to install more? Do I need to mess with my xorg.conf? Many questions, few answers.
So, what can I do to achieve my goals? Which path to follow, and what are the next steps?
Any hint is welcome :-)
Update: Thanks to everyone who answered. I will migrate my work environment to a "discrete" installation, and will use "optimus/bumblebee" as a parallel play project and see how far I get... I will post future questions in new threads.