Let me start by saying that on Linux Mint 18 I had this exact same hardware: same laptop, and same two monitors plugged into it. The laptop has an Nvidia GTX870M graphics card, which is a sort of combination card that works in tandem with the on-board Intel graphics card. Previously I was able to run both monitors from the laptop just fine.
However, now that I've installed Linux Mint 20, only one monitor (and the laptop display) works. I've tried various drivers:
- using the built-in Nouveau drivers
- works and I can see the second monitor in "Displays" ... but when I enable it my computer crashes
- installing
nvidia-driver-390
- works, but no second monitor
- installing
nvidia-driver-418
(recommended by Nvidia)- sort of works, but I need to add
nomodeset
otherwise I boot into a black screen with blinking cursor (and even withnomodeset
only one monitor works), and it can only mirror the screen
- sort of works, but I need to add
- installing the Nvidia drivers (418) from NVidia directly
- this worked, but I couldn't run
nvidia-settings
, and it seems even the Nvidia people discourage installing this way now
- this worked, but I couldn't run
I've also tried other versions without luck. I --uninstall
ed the manual installation, and I'm doing apt-get purge *nvidia*
in-between each.
I've also tried using both bumlbebee
and nvidia-prime
(and even both at the same time, although apparently that isn't even supposed to work). It seems to have no effect: even when I use prime-select intel
I still can't use the second monitor (the one presumably controlled by the Intel card).
I've also tried wiping my xorg.conf
, and generating a new one using nvidia-settings -r
and that X-Windows command: none of them seem to help. Meanwhile when I try to use the graphical Nvidia settings tool, it either shows up completely empty, or with just a PRIME profiles tab, depending on which drivers I use. There's no way to ever use this tool to configure things.
So in conclusion, I can get the best results with the 390 driver, getting an independent laptop and monitor, but even with it I can't get the second monitor to work. Can anyone help?