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Rolinh

Member

From: Switzerland

Registered: 2011-05-07

Posts: 144

Website

Laptop with optimus + dock and two monitors configuration

Hi all,

I own a Lenovo T420 Laptop which has Optimus technology. It has an integrated intel HD3000 and an nvidia 4200M card.
I also own a dock on which I plugged two monitors, one on VGA port and one on DVI port.
I have bumblebee installed and use the nouveau driver.

What I would like to do is configure Xorg so that when I put my laptop on the dock, the laptop LVDS screen shuts down so I only use my two monitors.
I tried many different configurations but could not achieve the one I want and most of the time I end up having only one screen working on one monitor. I read Bumblebee, Xorg, DualScreen and MultiHead wiki pages and several forum threads (especially this one) but was not able to achieve what I want.

Also, from what I understand, the DVI port is hardwired to the nvidia card whereas the VGA one is hardwired to the intel.

Any idea or starting point to help me out with this ?

Any help will be very appreciated. :-)

Rolinh

Member

From: Switzerland

Registered: 2011-05-07

Posts: 144

Website

Re: Laptop with optimus + dock and two monitors configuration

Just in case anyone comes around here after a search:
I found a solution that works fine but not with bumblebee (yet at least):
- activate the nvidia card through the BIOS (NOT optimus thingy, only nvidia)
- buy a DP to DVI adapter and use the DVI + DP for the two monitors

It is then straightforward and works fine with either the nvidia or nouveau driver (except for the fonts with the proprietary blob but nouveau works like a charm so I would definitely recommend using nouveau if you have the same setup).
So I can confirm that VGA is linked to the intel and DP and DVI (on the dock) are linked to the nvidia card.