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Okay so repeating my problem aggain:

I have a Dell XPS 17 (L702X) laptop with a nVIDIA GeForce 555M Graphics card inside running Ubuntugnome 13.10. Since my batterytime is amazingly small (2 hours on a 9 cell batery which gives 10-12 hours in windows) i tried to install the latest nVIDIA driver for my card in hopes of being able to use the integrated graphics instead of the dedicated card all the time (fan noices are so annoying), here comes the trouble!

After installing driver 331.20 using these commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-331

I restarted my laptop and then I came to this loadingscreen where everything just stopped.

official_by_aldomann-d6k2mof.png">http://th04.deviantart.net/fs70/300W/f/2013/240/1/2/ubuntu_gnome_13_10_plymouth_theme_official_by_aldomann-d6k2mof.png

First time around I held the powerbutton and tried again and when I realised it did'nt work I reinstalled my system!

After setting all up I tried same thing again but came to same conclusion, though this time I realized I could go "Ctrl + Alt + F2" to get a terminal where I basicly ran 

sudo apt-get purge "and then all installed nvidiacomponents"

followed by 

startx

and I was back to "normal"... After this I tried also instead of

sudo apt-get install nvidia-331

to go

sudo apt-get install nvidia-current

but unfortunatly with same result.

Does anyone know if I can fix this problem somehow? It is really annoying to have my battery drained in a couple of hours when I know what it is capable of..

Payerl
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  • dublcate of http://askubuntu.com/questions/399153/after-apt-get-upgrade-system-always-boot-to-low-graphics-mode? – user154126 Jan 03 '14 at 11:27

1 Answers1

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GeForce 555M uses comes with an optimization technology called Optimus. Optimus watches the resource load of the computer and automatically switches between the discrete GPU and the integrated low power one on the MB. The problem is that Optimus only supported on Windows. This why you get so many more hours of use on Windows - the majority of your computer time is probably spent using the onboard GPU and not the 555M. In Ubuntu, it's seeing the card and installing it (probably using the Nouveau based open source Nvidia drivers) so your low power on board card is being bypassed. There is a project called Bumblebee that is working on adding Optimus support to Ubuntu, with power management issues being a primary goal of the project. More information can be found on the Ubuntu Wiki

djmadscribbler
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