google earth crashing

jazzo · 09-13-2012, 12:19 PM

Ah sorry, my mistake thought you meant something else, apologies.
It's a Dell XPS 17 Intel® Core™ i7-2720QM CPU @ 2.20GHz × 8 64bits
thanks for your help

camorri · 09-13-2012, 01:28 PM

You do have two graphics cards in that system. I had a difficult time information on Optimus though. I read through several "reviews" and Dell's site for information. I found this paragraph on one of the review sites.

Quote:

On the other hand, another technology called Hyper Threading is responsible for simulating four virtual cores. Thus the Core i7-2630QM is able to process a total of eight threads, including the four physical cores, at the same time. A maximum power consumption of 45 watts isn't exactly little, but it's acceptable in view of the excellent performance. Incidentally, the installed graphics chip, HD Graphics 3000, is not useable in the alternative with the 3D display, respectively graphics card. It lacks Nvidia's Optimus Technology for automatic graphics switching.

It appears you do not have Optimus hardware in the laptop.

At this point I'm unsure on how to help. The Nvidia card should work with GLX. There are some things I would try, if it were my system.

I would look in the BIOS to see if I could deactivate the Intel VGA card. I don't think you could remove it, its probably chips on the system board.

Next I would make an /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. In there you can specify what modules(s) you want loaded. For a little background, in the last few releases of the x-server, the developers have it working so graphics hardware is detected and the correct modules loaded without a xorg.conf file. This works well on most systems, including the Nvidia hardware on my system.

When you install the Nvidia driver from Nvida ( not from your distros repos ) you get an option to create an xorg.cong file. I always make one, even though I don't need it. Here is a link to an older How To for Slackware. -->http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...in-x11-402003/ It shows the xorg.conf file and what needs to be added.

I would make one on your system. I would have a look at Ubuntu's forums for any one else with a similar system. There may be a How To there that would help.

Possibly someone else on this forum that has more experience than I can jump in, and help out.

camorri · 09-13-2012, 01:54 PM

Jazzo,

Did some more searching. Here is what I found. Two links you can read over.

-->http://www.cmdematos.com/2011/10/ubu...s17-l702x.html

and this link -->http://askubuntu.com/questions/36930...mus-work#36936

Quote:

To fix the OpenGL graphics and to enable the use of both Graphics adapters, install mesa-utils, driconf and Bumblebee. There are several distributions out there for both Bumblebee and an offshoot project called IronHide. Dont use any of the distributions from Github, instead carefully follow the instructions on the stable Ubuntu Bumblebee Project.

The link to the Ubuntu Bumblebee Project -->https://launchpad.net/~bumblebee/+archive/stable

So, it looks like from these links, your Nvidia card can be made to work.

In my previous post I mentioned installing the Nvidia driver from Nvidia. Note, the Ubuntu posts clearly state this is a mistake. They have instructions on how to remove that driver, and install the correct packages from Ubuntu to get the graphics working in Ubuntu.

I'll follow this thread, If I can help, I will. Best of luck.

jazzo · 09-14-2012, 02:31 PM

thanks for your help, much appreciated. I will give it a go. Just one thing, will any of the above have any effect outside linux? My machine has dual boot, linux and windows7 so I don't want to cause any problem to windows
cheers

camorri · 09-14-2012, 02:36 PM

Quote:

I will give it a go. Just one thing, will any of the above have any effect outside linux?

Simple answer, no.

This assumes you follow the instructions, and don't do anything outside the linux partitions.

Best of luck with it.

jazzo · 09-16-2012, 04:30 PM

HI it looks like it worked. I installed mesa and driconf

Code:

sudo apt-get install mesa-utils driconf

and this

Code:

sudo apt-get purge nvidia-current
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates

I didn't even get to this http://askubuntu.com/questions/36930...mus-work#36936 and google earth works now. It's a bit slow to be honest, but I guess that's normal
So, now basically the nvidia card is not working, is that what I have done?
thanks

camorri · 09-16-2012, 04:49 PM

Quote:

google earth works now. It's a bit slow to be honest, but I guess that's normal

Its never been fast for me, it does download a lot of stuff, so your internet connection speed ( and the internet ) affect how 'fast' googleearth is.

Quote:

So, now basically the nvidia card is not working, is that what I have done?

Not sure. Open a console and do a 'sudo lsmod | grep nvidia' and see if its listed. If nothing shows, then yes, you have disabled the nvidia driver.

jazzo · 09-17-2012, 12:25 PM

Hiya, yes I don't get anything at all:

Code:

antobbo@antobbo-xps17-ubuntu:~$ 'sudo lsmod | grep nvidia
>

Something I noticed - it's not an issue as such. Do you know the launcher on the left-hand side with all the icons on it? Well before disabling nvidia all the icons were displayed on the panel, meaning that there was quite a bit of scrolling to do to get to the bottom of the list, whereas now the icons collapses (see attachment). Again, just an observation, I wonder why it does that!
thanks for your help with this, very much appreciated

camorri · 09-17-2012, 12:37 PM

Interesting. I don't run Ubuntu, or the Unity desktop, so I don't know why. If you need an answer, open another thread, there are a lot of people on this board using Ubuntu.

jazzo · 09-17-2012, 12:46 PM

I might actually, I am curious : - )
thanks again for your help

camorri · 09-17-2012, 12:50 PM

You are welcome.