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I have a Laptop with an Intel i7-6700HQ and a Nvidia GTX970M. Now im trying to set a fresh Ubuntu install up and get the Hybrid Graphics to work properly, so that I can use the Intel Graphics when doing lightweight work.

I already tried everything I found on the internet but in the end nothing really worked out for me, here are the attempts I made and the problems i ran into:

I tried installing Ubuntu 16.04 and 16.10, always installed the Nvidia drivers via PPA (not doing so results in nouveau freezing.)

Usually these drivers support Nvidia Prime.

I tried that out in Ubuntu 16.04 I could not switch to Intel Graphics, if I tried it, after logging out, I could not log back in.

I also tried it in Ubuntu 16.10, there switching to intel Graphics worked, but switching back to nvidia resulted in the exact same problem (I was not able to log back in). (here I had to switch with the prime-select command, switching in the Nvidia-Xorg gui did not work)

I also tried setting some Flags in the Grub file as I read that it fixed similar problems for other users but it never worked out.

The last thing I tried was installing bumblebee, so made a clean ubuntu install, installed the nvidia drivers, switched to the intel graphics via prime and then set up bumblebee and the bumblebee config file. When trying to run glxgears with bumblebee a window pops up wich says that glxgears encountered an error. After that I have some framedrops and the screen freezes. In addition after closing the laptop, when i try to wake him up from suspense, I only result in getting a blackscreen and no reaction so that I have to shut him down.

I already spend a week trying to figure this out, without any success, I hope you can give me some advice or hints what else I can try.

Thank you in advance, giz

gizo
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  • Can't help you out here, but I am in the exact same position. I thought it was safe to buy last years hardware, but... – user23710 Mar 24 '17 at 14:47

1 Answers1

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I'm on 16.04 with a 755M and was having a similar series of problems trying to switch to GPU from iGPU. I'll recount my experience in the hope that it's helpful to you.

TLDR: Try various drivers until one worked (378.13 for me).

Long Version:

I did as described here:

Graphics issues after/while installing Ubuntu 16.04/16.10 with NVIDIA graphics

to purge and reinstall and reinstall xorg

This kept me from a black screen.

From the "Additional Drivers" tab in the Software & Updates menu, I have several different choices of NVIDIA Driver to use. I tried those that were recommended, and they didn't throw any errors. I could then choose Nvidia in the Prime Profiles tab of the NVIDIA X Server Settings. Upon logout and re-login (the login itself worked fine for at least some drivers) NVIDIA Prime had reverted to Intel.

It wasn't until I used the 378.13 open source driver that the NVIDIA X Server Settings saved upon re-login and everything worked as expected.

I hope that helps! Best of luck!

Community
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jon
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