Thinkpads Forum

I just recently got a T420 with the Nvidia NVS 4200m video card. I'm having a hell of a time getting the drivers install and getting it to run. I've tried both Ubuntu 10.10 and 11.04. Ideally I'd like to use 10.10 so I'll probably move my focus back to there. I read somewhere that it worked out of the box in 11.04 so I tried it, but found that wasn't the case (for me anyway).

I release that Optimus isn't supported in Linux other then the experimental Bumblebee project that's being worked on (and making good progress). I set the graphics mode to discrete in the BIOS and turned OFF OS detection.

I've followed countless write ups on the Ubuntu forums and some blog write ups to install the latest version of the Nvidia drivers. However every time I do I ended up with a black screen and blinking cursor on boot. Which is my understanding means "no screens were found".

Has anyone gotten this working on 10.10 and/or 11.04?

The part I'm not clear on is the BIOS settings. Do I set it to integrated, install the OS, install the driver, reboot and set it to discrete? Do I set it to discrete from the beginning and install the OS. I believe I tried both this weekend in desperation but to be honest I don't remember.

I'll admit I didn't have a tremendous amount of time to troubleshoot it this weekend so I'm planning to continue working on it this week. If anyone has any insights and/or advice I'd greatly appreciate it!

I have the same laptop and while it was tricky at first it's all working fine now.


I installed 11.04 (had flail with other versions due to, I think, the graphics driver not being compatible with the kernel).
Ran through the normal install process.
Then checked the nvidia drivers were on, ran sudo nvidia-xconfig
Restarted.
Went into BIOS and set the graphics to discrete (I changed no other settings here)
save and start

everything working fine now.

I hope this helps

actually, you also need to set os detection for optimus to off

bjordan wrote:I just recently got a T420 with the Nvidia NVS 4200m video card. I'm having a hell of a time getting the drivers install and getting it to run. I've tried both Ubuntu 10.10 and 11.04. Ideally I'd like to use 10.10 so I'll probably move my focus back to there. I read somewhere that it worked out of the box in 11.04 so I tried it, but found that wasn't the case (for me anyway).

I release that Optimus isn't supported in Linux other then the experimental Bumblebee project that's being worked on (and making good progress). I set the graphics mode to discrete in the BIOS and turned OFF OS detection.

I've followed countless write ups on the Ubuntu forums and some blog write ups to install the latest version of the Nvidia drivers. However every time I do I ended up with a black screen and blinking cursor on boot. Which is my understanding means "no screens were found".

Has anyone gotten this working on 10.10 and/or 11.04?

The part I'm not clear on is the BIOS settings. Do I set it to integrated, install the OS, install the driver, reboot and set it to discrete? Do I set it to discrete from the beginning and install the OS. I believe I tried both this weekend in desperation but to be honest I don't remember.

I'll admit I didn't have a tremendous amount of time to troubleshoot it this weekend so I'm planning to continue working on it this week. If anyone has any insights and/or advice I'd greatly appreciate it!

Set it to discrete with no OS detection right from the start. Ubuntu should have an install automatic enough to figure out what to do with nvidia graphic card.

schloosh wrote:actually, you also need to set os detection for optimus to off

Yes this turned out to be very important and messed me up early on when I was trying to get it installed on 10.04. Had me banging my head for a while trying to figure out why the card wasn't showing up.

comps wrote:Set it to discrete with no OS detection right from the start. Ubuntu should have an install automatic enough to figure out what to do with nvidia graphic card.

I thought the issue with doing that is the nvidia-current driver that ships with Ubuntu 11.04 is an earlier version that is just before support for the Nvidia NVS 4200m was added? Perhaps not if that worked for schloosh.

I did finally get it to work this way.

Installed with Optimus on in the BIOS. Once booted I ran all the Ubuntu updates (latest kernel, etc). I then ran the following:

1) sudo apt-get purge nvidia-*
2) sudo apt-get purge xserver-xorg-video-nouveau
3) sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates
4) sudo apt-get update
5) sudo apt-get install nvidia-current
6) sudo nvidia-xconfig

(credit)

Then rebooted after setting graphics to discrete in the BIOS. It sounds like I made it harder then it needed to be though.

Everything worked for a while until I installed xubuntu-desktop and tried to connect to my WiFi at home then I started getting complete system hangs and had to hard reset.

Perhaps I'll try the clean install method later with discrete enabled.