On my new laptop (Lenovo T520), there are two graphics cards: integrated Intel and a NVidia card.

The laptop supports Optimus, but since this is currently only supported in Win7 (I am aware of the various efforts to support it in Linux), I use the BIOS setting to disable the integrated Intel card, and only use the NVidia graphcis.

All is well when I'm at my desk. Using the NVidia graphics (I installed the driver nvidia-current), I can hook up two external monitors (two external monitors is not possible using Intel graphics).

Here's the issue:

• I sometimes use the laptop on battery. When on battery, I would like to use Intel graphics, since it uses less power.


• When starting the computer on battery, I enter BIOS setup to disable NVidia and enable Intel graphics.


• When I tried this I got a blank screen after the NVidia driver loaded.


• My question: How do I set up the OS so it uses the correct drivers in this case?


• It doesn't have to be automatic, I would be perfectly happy to make a manual selection at some point during the boot process.