I just bought a new computer(MSI GS63VR) and I've set up a dual boot with Ubuntu 16.04. The graphics card is an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060. I have a second monitor(HP) that I want to use as my primary monitor at home and to the left of my laptop. I had trouble even getting the system to recognize the monitor plugged into the HDMI port in the first place. After a lot of googling and following all the "solutions" I could find, I've finally gotten the closest I've been with two monitors, but I can only view them in mirrored mode. If I uncheck the Mirrored Mode box in the Ubuntu display settings then it gives me this weird stretched out version of my screen across my laptop screen and external monitor and it's hard to click on anything because the screen shows the cursor in one spot, but when I click it will click on something else instead. This question(Graphical streching and offset cursor) seems to relate to this problem, but like many of the questions I've come across that match my problem, there are no answers... This worked fine on my last computer(Lenovo Yoga 710) on Ubuntu 16, but I had a bunch of other problems and it was time to upgrade.
Things I've tried:
xorg-edgers and graphics-drivers PPA's. I tried installing all the different drivers that were available to me under these and one other PPA that I can't remember. I ran sudo apt-get purge nvidia* after every driver change and rebooted the machine. The drivers attempted include all of the open source, proprietary, and X-Org options.
Downloaded drivers directly from Nvidia in the form of a .run file and installed that. Well, tried to. That failed every time, but didn't give me any reasoning.
I've found that if I run the Nvidia X Server Settings app I can select the PRIME monitor, which I believe is my built-in display, but I'm unable to do anything with it.
I even went so far as to reinstall Ubuntu...
Here are some more unresolved questions that seem to be related:
How to use my dual monitors seperately?
Extending Monitors on Ubuntu 16.04 causes distortion (same laptop)
I also noticed that before logging in it looks like it's working correctly. Like if I move my mouse between monitors the little login password box will switch monitors and the resolution looks good.
UPDATE: It's hopeless for now. There's a known issue but it's been unassigned since 2014 and doesn't show any signs of getting fixed. I gave up and traded in the MSI GS63VR for a Dell Inspiron 15 7567. It was about $500 cheaper, so I spent the difference on a nice 27" monitor and ordered some RAM with $250 leftover. Only one monitor works still since it's an Nvidia GTX 1050 graphics card. I tried the Lenovo Yoga 720 since that had an integrated graphics card, but nope. No HDMI port and only two USB ports.
