Slackware 14.0 graphics problems, nvidia, i915, nouveau
 

Just a quick note to mention that if you have a nvidia graphics card and an intel i915 graphics chipset, then, like me, you may have problems with random crashes.

To fix this I installed xf86-video-nouveau-blacklist-noarch-1 and then installed the nvidia driver via the slackbuild, then I blacklisted i915, intel-agp and intel-gtt.

While this seems to have worked, I'm sure that I should have done something with lilo and append="nomodeset"

What is the best way to fix this conflict?

samac

Also had a problem with ALSA not working properly. Used the same fix and blacklisted snd_hda_intel.

It would be useful if there were some way of selecting which piece of hardware to use. For example I have separate graphics card, sound card and network card, but the mother board also has onboard graphics, sound and network, and just to confuse the issue they have started putting graphics cards into CPU's.

Is there a simple solution?

samac

Yes there is.

Disable your on-board devices in the bios.

I just checked, and as I thought, I had. All onboard hardware had already been turned off.

I thought that the linux kernel is not capable of taking settings from the BIOS and it examines the hardware on boot.

samac

Well, disabling the Intel chipset prevent laptops users to get a longer battery life - which is supposed to be the benefit expected from buying a laptop including switchable graphics.

In that field, clearly YMMV depending on your hardware, as a search for "switchable graphics" or "optimus" in this forum shows.

del...

Not entirely true. I have systems with on-board video and they are disable with no issues here.