I'm trying to get Intel and Nvidia graphics card working together with two monitors. One monitor should use the Intel card and the other the Nvidia card. Of course, I want to use only one keyboard and one mouse to switch between both screens. Bumblebee didn't work for me.
I don't want to use the xserver-xorg-video-all
package because I need the Nvidia card for gaming and I can't use only one graphics card because I need one for KVM virtualisation and the other one for my Linux desktop
So I tried to install the drivers and to configure the Xserver manually. The Nvidia driver is working and I get a video output. But I don't get a video output with the Intel card.
I followed the instructions in this blog post
The config files:
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.nvidia
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.intel
/etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf
Best Answer
It is possible since 2013 using graphics offloading (see http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/319.12/README/randr14.html)
The following uses the free drivers (nouveau) and won't work using nvidia's proprietary ones.
I've been using this for a few months and it works well enough for me. Here's my setup :
Here's what you should use if you're running off an nvidia card and would like to output a third screen via the embeded graphics (intel) :
Xorg.conf
Now add this to your session manager startup script :
Those pastes come from my own config and should be tweaked to fit your own use case. The full documentation is available here : http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/319.12/README/randr14.html
In this configuration, the nvidia GPU does all the rendering work. The Intel iGPU simply displays whatever the main GPU sends to it. Please note that the nvidia GPU is totally unaware of the state of the iGPU when it sends frames to display. That means there may be a fair amount of tearing (horizontally AND diagonaly !). For those who may wanna tru it, you can't use the "TearFree" option in your Xorg.conf.