[ltp] Thinkpad W520, nouveau and external monitors

[Micha]

On 17/02/2012 16:16, Marco Vittorini Orgeas wrote:
> On 2/17/2012 2:54 PM, Marco Vittorini Orgeas wrote:
> > On 2/17/2012 2:34 PM, Micha wrote:
> >> I have the w520 with a Quadro 2000m. The nouvou driver is not even
> >> remotely an option for me though so I can't report on that (first thing
> >> I do with a new kernel is delete it so it doesn't get in the way). As
> >> for the hardware setup, the external connectors are indeed connected to
> >> the NVIDIA and can't be run from the intel processor. With the default
> >> optimus setup X won't start with the nvidia driver so you can't connect
> >> external monitors. You can however change the video settings in the
> bios
> >> from optimus to discrete (always run discrete graphics internal and
> >> external, intel disabled). In this case the external connectors work
> >> just fine with nvidia-settings. The propriatry nvidia driver doens't
> >> know xrandr I'm afraid.
> > Thanks for your report but in the past I've run in *huge* problems
> > with proprietary nvidia blobs on thinkpad (t61) including xorg memory
> > consumption issues ( up to 1-2 gigs of ram when viewing big pdfs )
> > and really weird firefox rendering problems.
> >
> > Nouveau has been a life-saver for 2D daily  work, the system has been
> > always faster and solid since I replaced the nvidia blobs.
> >
> > Anyway did you (or someone else) ever tried nouveau(xrandr) + discrete
> > + external VGA monitor ? This is the combination I would be interested
> > in.
> >
> > Thanks again.
> Someone reports nouveau as working in this particular combination:
> http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=263421#7
I got this laptop for CUDA development which is why I can't use nouvou.
Never had issue with the NVIDIA blob on both t61 and this laptop. As for
nouvou, I didn't try an external monitor, but it did fire up on the
internal one before I threw it out, so it does come up, but again, can't
say anything about the external interfaces. I believe that if it's going
to work, this laptop is one of the easiest ones for it to do so, most
lower to middle end laptops don't even let you switch in bios to
discrete mode (I know that the w520 and dell m4600 do allow this but the
dell xps doesn't).