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:
8) Blacklist the nouveau driver by adding the following to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
Code:
blacklist vga16fb
blacklist nouveau
blacklist rivafb
blacklist nvidiafb
blacklist rivatv
9) Make the nvidia kernel driver loadable by using a symbolic link as follows:
Code:
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.
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