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I bought a new Dell Inspiron 5420 with 11.10 preinstalled.

I am not able to configure my graphic settings.

  1. how do i check whether my nvidia graphics is working or not?
  2. how to check my intel graphics too
  3. battery backup is too low. I tried Jupiter but its not working. is there any alternative software for power management?
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With regards to your drivers, have you run jockey-gtk? It is an application which specifically checks to see what drivers you may need and tells you if they are active or not. Also, it sounds like you have two graphics chips on there and it's likely that only one will work. You should check your bios to see if you can chose which one (it may only let you use the intel one). – SuperMatt Jul 4 '12 at 9:26
I am guessing your system has optimus enabled since you mentioned two graphics card. But optimus is not supported by Nvidia in linux. So your laptop must not shipped with ubuntu. Maybe you are paying for windows which is not given to you. – Web-E Jul 4 '12 at 11:19
anyway, if for fixing those issues, please post the result of lspci | grep VGA – Web-E Jul 4 '12 at 11:19
lspci | grep VGA gives the following results: 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Device 0166 (rev 09) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation Device 0de9 (rev a1) – ius Jul 4 '12 at 13:02

1 Answer

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By default, the 11.10 preloads do not make use of the Nvidia card, even though it may show up in lspci. This is because of the poor optimus support (as others have already stated). For all intents and purposes, treat the Nvidia chip as disabled.

The 11.10 preloads on these machines are set up to only use the Intel Graphics chip. You can configure the graphics settings by going to System Settings and then clicking Displays to adjust the resolution as well as set up multi-head monitors.

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