[ltp] T510 Gotchas

[John Jason Jordan]

On Mon, 31 Jan 2011 14:35:22 -0600
"Jeffrey L. Taylor" <jeff@abluz.dyndns.org> dijo:

>I'm about to buy a T510 w/ the switchable graphics (Opitmus).  Any
>hardware I should avoid (e.g., WiFi adapters, fingerprint reader,
>Bluetooth)?  Any Linux distros to stay away from?  Any that make
>switching between the Intel integrated graphics and Nvidia discrete
>graphics easy?

I've never used Linux on any computer with Intel graphics, but I have
some experience with the nVidia drivers. 

My laptop has the nVidia Quadro NVS 140M and when I installed Fedora it
automatically installed the nouveau driver. I used that driver for a
year without a single problem, until one day I needed to connect to a
projector in a classroom. In the process of trying the get the
projector to use the highest resolution it was capable of I installed
the proprietary nVidia driver. 

The nVidia driver did not solve the problem with the projector, so I
went back to the nouveau driver. What a PITA! Installing the nVidia
driver automatically blacklists nouveau. Worse, even after removing the
blacklists and deleting the xorg.conf file that the nVidia driver
created, I found several apps that would no longer launch. The apps
were a disparate lot, like ksysguard, FontMatrix, Avidemux, among
others. Each gave the same error message - unable to load an nVidia
library. I tried for days to resolve the issue, and finally had to
reinstall the nVidia driver in order to get all my apps working again.
And even after doing so 3D screensavers that used to work fine with the
nouveau driver no longer work. I still use the nouveau driver, but I
have to leave the nVidia driver installed.

As far as I am concerned the nVidia proprietary driver today should be
considered a one-way street. If you want to go back you'll need divine
intervention or witchcraft.

It used to be simple: There was always an xorg.conf file and all you
had to do was change the driver line from "nv" to "nvidia" or back and
restart X.