NVidia Quadro 1000M (ThinkPad W520)

[Willendorfer]

I am able to run Ubuntu 11.04 (in classic desktop) without the nvidia graphics driver. I'm reluctant to try something that will break the OS and force me to reinstall everything. If you can give me some instructions that are guaranteed to work, or at least are recoverable from, then I will try it.

[malupel]

i just installed Ubuntu 11.04 on my W520 without problems. everything works fine, without any further configuration. (i just have some strange problems with usb/esata and usb3 hdd's, sometimess there are not recognized automaticly. i did not figured out yet.)

I did it the following way:

- Disable nvidia graphics cards in bios, set display to integrated graphic.
- install ubuntu, install all updates with the updatemanager.
- now set the display to discrete graphic in the bios and start ubuntu. this works for me.
- now start the additional drivers tool (system/administration/additional drivers) and add the recommended nvidia driver.
- restart ubuntu and be happy

[bro]

To safe battery I usually choose integrated in the bios. However, you might be able to (partly) solf this problem with bumblebee. Bumblebee is a work in progress to support Optimus for linux.

So far I got it to install fine, but I can't get it to shut down the nvidia card completely when it isn't using it, so it is still draining the battery.

https://github.com/MrMEEE/bumblebee

[apetrynet]

The source of the problem was with NVidia Optimus. Had to go to the BIOS and disable Optimus completely and set the card to run always in Discrete mode. The OS detection in Optimus doesn't seem to work, it wasn't until I completely disabled it that things started working. Hopefully battery life doesn't suffer too much.

Here's a quick tutorial of what I did to get a fresh install working after this discovery and only using Ubuntu packages to do so (I hate installing things from outside the package manager).

1) Disable Optimus in the BIOS, set the card to run in Discrete mode

2) Install Ubuntu

4) Activate the NVidia proprietary driver under "Additional Drivers"

5) Reboot

6) Run nvidia-xconfig.

7) Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf, add the following to the "Device" section:

BusId "PCI:1:0:0"

8) Blacklist the nouveau driver by adding the following to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

blacklist vga16fb
blacklist nouveau
blacklist rivafb
blacklist nvidiafb
blacklist rivatv

9) Make the nvidia kernel driver loadable by using a symbolic link as follows:

sudo ln -s /var/lib/dkms/nvidia-current/2.70.41.06/build/nvidia.ko /lib/modules/2.6.38-8-generic/kernel/drivers/video/nvidia/nvidia.ko

sudo depmod -aq

10) Reboot!

Now it should be working. Unfortunately the ubuntu "additional drivers" GUI will still report the driver as "Available but not in use" this is however false. You'll know you're using the right driver because a big NVidia logo flashes on the screen just before login (and nvidia-settings is fully functional).

Hope this helps my fellow W520 users, now I can finally enjoy my new computer.

Hi!

Thanks for the tutorial.
I had a problem with playing flash video in full screen after following it though. I solved this by commenting out the

 blacklist nvidiafb

Does anyone have problems with or any idea of why fading to "authorising dialogues" (gksudo) is choppy?

The full screen video is still choppy. I thought it worked this morning, but it's still choppy when I tested it again now.
Anyone have the same problem?

OK!! This time I think I solved it.. Please excuse my noobness.
I removed the symlink and the playback worked fine.


Thanks again,
-Daniel

[da7oom]

Hi!

Thanks for the tutorial.
I had a problem with playing flash video in full screen after following it though. I solved this by commenting out the

 blacklist nvidiafb

Does anyone have problems with or any idea of why fading to "authorising dialogues" (gksudo) is choppy?

The full screen video is still choppy. I thought it worked this morning, but it's still choppy when I tested it again now.
Anyone have the same problem?

OK!! This time I think I solved it.. Please excuse my noobness.
I removed the symlink and the playback worked fine.


Thanks again,
-Daniel

do u recommended me to go for w520 ?

is this mean now ubuntu working fine for you ?

[apetrynet]

Hey!

It works fine for me now. There is a slight lag sometimes while the GPU ramps up to full throttle. You can force it to always be at full, but that drains the battery. Please note that I've only had this machine for a week so I haven't tested everything yet.
I like the machine. It feels strudy and has two wonderful BIOS fetures which helped me go for the w520. You can wsap the Fn and Ctrl keys on the left side of the keyboard, and you can switch off the optimus system.

I had partial success with the bumblebee scripts, but the OpenGl performance was way slower then with Descrete only setup.

Good luck with your choise,
-Daniel

[gilesp]

Daniel (apetrynet),

are you running 64 bit Ubuntu? If so, are you using the nVidia binary driver? I am running 64 bit 11.04 and getting lockups when I unplug the AC adapter, and when I resume from suspend it only succeeds maybe 1/2 the time.

In contrast, when I tried the 32 bit version everything worked fine. Also, when I had the display set to 'integrated' in the BIOS, everything worked fine (but I couldn't do multi-head).

If you are running x86_64 and the above is working fine for you, I'm intensely curious what version of the driver you're using, what your xorg.conf settings are, and anything else special around your configuration that might be relevant (using the standard .deb packaged driver version, or one downloaded from nVidia's site? etc). I'm trying to figure out if my w520 is just a dud, or if others have similar issues to my own

Thanks much,

Peter

[apetrynet]

Hey Peter!

I'm running ubuntu 11.04 64bit and the latest drivers form the repository. BIOS set to descrete only.
I've had no trouble with the suspending or hibernating this far. I have also had success with pluging/unplugging the AC.

BUT....

I'm sad to say that my problem with choppy full screen playback in flash turned up again. I tried setting the Nvidia power settings to max performance with no luck. I don't understand why this bug comes and goes, but I haven't had the time to dig into it yet. Perhaps it has to do with suspending?

When it comes to OpenGL performance it seems to work fine. It runs blender and glxgears without problems.
Mplayer with fullHD also works, but it sometimes says that my machine is too slow so I guess theres still a few hickups.
I don't have the machine with me now, but can post the xorg.conf later.

It seems that my problems are all 2D related.. Don't know why there should be a difference though..

Please post success stories

-Daniel

[rationalstorm]

I had trouble booting my W520 with the Nvidia module enabled. Things worked fine with the Intel card activated, but as soon as the Nvidia card was used the system would freeze when booting. Sometimes, it would boot, but most of the time it wouldn't. There is a separate issue that crashes the system when ACPI calls are made. This happens when you use the brightness controls, but also seems to happen (in some configurations) during boot when GDM ist started. Adding acpi=off in grub as a workaround until this is fixed lets me boot reliably.

[VValdo]

Just got my machine. I started up w/the default bios settings and got some notice about not being able to run unity. So it ran the old interface... sans any kind of acceleration (compiz-- dropshadows, animations etc)

I went back and turned on discrete in the bios, rebooted to the nvidia logo and everything was good-- until I realized I couldn't change the brightness or the volume.

So I tried a few boots and killing xorg.conf and got it back to intel, which is fine for now. Except I kinda want some compiz goodness.

(ha- I just realized I'm running w/o any xorg.conf AT ALL... must be using defaults.) Can someone who's got the integrated gpu working w/that stuff be so good as to post:

BIOS settings
xorg.conf

Or, if someone knows how to get nvidia's driver going w/o these volume/brightness headaches, I'd appreciate the above as well..

thanks!

W