dual screen with nvidia 960m on arch (repost from arch forums)

Hey guys,

I've been trying for a while to get dual screen happening with nvidia proprietary drivers on Arch with my alienware 13r2.

To date I've only been able to get it to register either my external monitor via hdmi or the laptop monitor. At the moment I have it working with only the external. Some outputs:

uname -a

Linux seanlaptop 4.16.3-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu Apr 19 09:17:56 UTC 2018 x86_64 GNU/Linux

lshw

*-display
description: VGA compatible controller
product: HD Graphics 520
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 2
bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
version: 07
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pciexpress msi pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
configuration: driver=i915 latency=0
resources: irq:126 memory:db000000-dbffffff memory:70000000-7fffffff ioport:f000(size=64) memory:c0000-dffff

*-display
description: 3D controller
product: GM107M [GeForce GTX 960M]
vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
version: a2
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list rom
configuration: driver=nvidia latency=0
resources: irq:135 memory:dc000000-dcffffff memory:b0000000-bfffffff memory:c0000000-c1ffffff ioport:e000(size=128) memory:dd000000-dd07ffff

nvidia-settings -v

nvidia-settings: version 390.48 (builduser@felix) Wed Apr 4 22:26:43 CST
2018
The NVIDIA X Server Settings tool.

This program is used to configure the NVIDIA Linux graphics driver.
For more detail, please see the nvidia-settings(1) man page.

Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 2560 x 1440, maximum 16384 x 16384
HDMI-0 connected primary 2560x1440+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 597mm x 336mm
2560x1440 59.95*+
1920x1080 60.00 59.94 50.00 60.05 60.00 50.04
1680x1050 59.95
1600x900 60.00
1440x900 59.89
1280x1024 75.02 60.02
1280x720 60.00 59.94 50.00
1152x864 75.00
1024x768 75.03 70.07 60.00
800x600 75.00 72.19 60.32 56.25
720x576 50.00
720x480 59.94
640x480 75.00 72.81 59.94 59.93


so the laptop monitor is not being recognised by xrandr. It also doesn't show up in the nvidia manager. Any suggestions how to gett hem working?

full detail mode output of xrandr please

I've been trying for a while to get dual screen happening with nvidia proprietary drivers on Arch with my alienware 13r2.

it is nvidia-drivers + crap not well supported intel gpu drivers + kernel

are you aware of that you have dual gpu box, which is bad in many aspects.

i suppose it is more intel gpu fault, intel gpu support is very bad on linux. and those intel related bugs i reported on bugs.kernel.org are still unsolved after longer than 2 years.

did you read gentoo and arch linux wiki about htis? how tosetup and configure dual gpu graphics on notebooks?

single nvidia gpu works flawless in gentoo on notebooks. but dual gpus are troublesome since it exists.
single nvidia gpu can be easily configured with nvidia-settings when using hte binary driver
as you pipe everything trough the intel gpu, you will have to look into that also

--

you buy an alienware hardware for gaming i suppose? why do you accept the intel gpu lag? it does not even work properly in windows 10 for several years that dual gpu thing. i would not label a notebook gaming when it has the bad intel gpu which does not support 3d / proper hdmi and such / causes microlags / performance issues on windows 10 when using a browser

Thanks for your reply,

Actually I bought an alienware laptop because it seemed like the best price unit at the time with discrete graphics and reasonable power in a 13 inch form for my work in computational engineering.

I went through all of the options in the how to's on the arch wiki when I first setup the machine on arch, but none of them worked for me. I know in principle it can be done as it worked fine on the linux mint install I had prior to arch.

What do you mean by pipe everything through the intel GPU? how would I look into this and will it help me get my laptop screen recognised again?

xrandr gives

Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 2560 x 1440, maximum 16384 x 16384
HDMI-0 connected primary 2560x1440+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 597mm x 336mm
2560x1440 59.95*+
1920x1080 60.00 59.94 50.00 60.05 60.00 50.04
1680x1050 59.95
1600x900 60.00
1440x900 59.89
1280x1024 75.02 60.02
1280x720 60.00 59.94 50.00
1152x864 75.00
1024x768 75.03 70.07 60.00
800x600 75.00 72.19 60.32 56.25
720x576 50.00
720x480 59.94
640x480 75.00 72.81 59.94 59.93