I've run into my first nVidia driver issues. Ever. ☹

I'm attempting to install the drivers on my shiny new Dell XPS15 8750. It has both an Intel (default) and nVidia graphics card; the Intel works just fine out of the box with Nouveau, with terrible fps. Installing the nVidia drivers causes a conflict with those, and X just displays a black screen. I can still interact via the virtual terminals, but with a 4k display it's kind of annoying.

I'm currently trying to install nvidia-bumblebee and related crap, bur it is not going well.

You want Optimus. Bumblebee is old

Well.. Welcome to NoVideo - hybrid graphics cards are a steaming pile of shit on Linux. Still are, probably will be for at least a few more years... It sucks.

I had a shitty week days ago trying to set this up in arch linux.

nvidia-xrun worked for me, but I couldn't turn off the gpu on demand, and scrolling in chrome was weird for some reason.

OTOH, Manjaro has been working nicely for me for months thanks to mhwd using bumblebee, and I think it was a zero config thing. https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/....

I am aware that you're not arch based.

Ahhhh I don't know how to do thissss
Nothing is working!

The downloaded nvidia drivers refuse to install and tell me to use the debian packages instead. Those seem installed but won't work at boot.

`nvidia-xconfig` generates an xorg.conf but it causes x11 to throw a fatal error (no screens). Without it, x11 runs, but just barely. No opengl, so almost everything is broken.

I've followed several guides and none of them have helped much. I think I've hit a wall 😐

Suggestions, @FrodoSwaggins? 🙁

Have you completely turned off secure boot in the bios. This was the issue for me after hours of headbanging.

@JFK422 Yes, it is off. The windows bootloader is also dead and disabled. The bios is set to use legacy boot options, and has "debian" as the primary

I also disabled the bloody annoying internal speaker. Got tired of hearing pong sound effects 😅

Similar problems on windows 10, I’m currently talking to razer help on Reddit, hope they eventually help out!

@FrodoSwaggins What is the debian package called? There are a plethora and none of them look right.

For now I have the intel driver working and I'm trying to get some work in before giving it another try. Tomorrow I'll try whatever advice you have!

I’ve remember the same issue with NVidia drivers so many years ago(don’t know how to say that without sounding old haha). Still can’t believe what a clusterfuck it can be still on brand new hardware on modern distros. Like wtf.. this is why we lose people to windows. The masses demand at minimum seamless installs/setups for shit like graphics.

@FrodoSwaggins

I installed nvidia-driver and nvidia-xconfig, ran the latter, and rebooted.

My system does not have an xorg.conf by default, so `nvidia-xconfig` generated its default simple configuration. Starting X causes it to throw an error saying "Fatal server error: (EE) No screens found"

If I delete xorg.conf, X will start, but complains that it cannot use opengl2, and all of the panels, etc. don't render. This also makes it impossible to start any programs manually.

I'm currently digging through `man xorg.conf` and the `nvidia-xconfig --advanced-help` to see if I can figure out what's missing/misconfigured.

@FrodoSwaggins Thanks. I'll send you an email tonight. But hopefully I can get it working before then.

@hash-table

`lspci` shows the pci address as 01:00.0

Under Section "Device" I've added:
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
and upon running `startx` it apparently freezes my screen, requiring me to switch to another vterm and kill it.

The log shows two errors: "[drm] Failed to open DRM device for pci:0000:01:00.0: -2" -- I've checked `lsmod` and `dmesg` and both show nvidia-drm being loaded. The second error in the log says "Number of created screens does not match number of detected devices. Configuration failed."

Relating to that, the log shows something interesting: It's using /root/xorg.conf.new and /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d instead of the /etc/X11/xorg.conf I've been editing. The config living in /root is using nouveau instead of nvidia. However, it lists two devices and two screens. The xorg.conf.d doesn't list anything useful save an "OutputClass" section for nvidia-drm

@hash-table I'll give it a try. Thanks!

Switch to linux

@dontbeevil nice necrotroll

@erandria but if the rant was about windows and the problem was clearly about drivers many comments would have been: "windows sucks, switch to linux"... In that case was totally fine, right? I'm just trying to help the same way