11

I have an Optimus laptop, a Dell XPS 15 L502, which I've had for a few years and have tried various things on (bumblebee, nvidia-prime, linux kernel optimus support).

The graphics card is an NVIDIA GT 540M.

I upgraded to Ubuntu 14.04 a few days ago and wanted to try nvidia-prime again (it wasn't working so great for me on 13.10), but nvidia-settings only tells me that it is not supported.

Software and Updates recognises the Nvidia card and drivers. Nvidia Settings currently gives me this:

** Message: PRIME: No offloading required. Abort
** Message: PRIME: is it supported? no

I've tried to purge and reinstall nvidia drivers a dozen times, I've tried with and without xorg.conf files, but still always the same thing.

I've followed all the guides I could find on Stack Overflow, Ask Ubuntu, and various other places.

EDIT: I was having problem with booting into "low-graphics mode", but that was due to a bad lightdm configuration that broke when I upgraded. I also had some segmentation fault issues with nvidia-settings installing the wrong version of itself (this was fixed by reinstalling just nvidia-settings).

EDIT: Have also found this bug report: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-prime/+bug/1283439

Improve this question

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
10

I have the same portable, I was using bumblebee before. But since 14.04 it was not working anymore and so now I switched to nvidia-prime. This is what I did:

Steps

  • Install Nouveau driver through "Software & updates"

  • Remove bumblebee or other installed nvidia drivers:

    sudo apt-get purge bumblebee*
sudo apt-get purge nvidia-*

  • An then reboot

  • Install nvidia 331-updates driver through "Software & updates" (should also install nvidia-settings and nvidia-prime)

  • Then reboot

Now run again nvidia-settings. This did it for me, more info here.

Improve this answer
2
  • 1
    I've fixed some of my other issues (thanks for putting me on the right track, but I still get the "is it supported? no" error message. Maybe it is the graphics card version? I've updated the question with the details (GT 540M).
    – dieuwe
    May 1, 2014 at 22:00
  • I did just get this "working", but ended up having to uninstall nvidia again due to the massive instability issues I am having with my displays. Not sure if the problem is caused by nvidia or not, but it seems the nvidia 331 package now supports my hardware.
    – dieuwe
    Jun 7, 2014 at 9:40
3

I had a similar problem. This is just a note to whomever else might find it useful.

Things started working once I re-enabled optimus from BIOS.

It seems the developers didn't do enough error handling. There should really be a bug report about that.

Improve this answer

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.