I have already asked from Novell (HP Elitebook 8560w (Certified)) and HP (HP Community - HP Elitebook 8560w and Linux support (Nvidia Optim… - Enterprise Business Community | HP Online Forum) forums about this particular laptop and haven’t gotten anwser. It has Nvidia Quadro 1000M graphics card that by default uses optimus technology which isn’t supported in Linux. There also doesn’t seem to be any bios switch to direct the graphics outputs to discrete graphics card (according to the bios manual) which usually renders the laptop useless (one can’t access the Nvidia card and has to use the integrated one, while the discrete card is still running and burning battery life). Even so the laptop is SLED certified with that graphics card (EliteBook 8560w) without any special info about how the problem is dealt with. So does this mean that Optimus is always disabled or is there somekind of magical fix only avaible for SLED or something?
Ah, it really seems that there’s no Optimus in that laptop (M4600 vs. W520 vs. 8560w). Not exactly offical source but makes sense. I guess I’ll buy that laptop tomorrow then.
I know NOTHING about this laptop.
Please, can you explain what is meant by the optimus technology and how important is it ? Is it just associated with longer battery life ? Is this post about battery life ? or is it about neither the nVidia proprietary driver nor open source nouveau drivers working ?
I note this nVidia page NVIDIA DRIVERS 275.09.07 Certified and this NVIDIA DRIVERS 275.09.07 Certified
which at the bottom of each in the “supported products” tab (for GNU/Linux with the proprietary nVidia graphic driver) has for supported hardware:
Quadro Notebook series:
5010M, 5000M, 4000M, 3000M, 2000M, **1000M**
… but you were pretty definitive that the Quadro 1000M with optimus technology is not supported, so it might help if you explain what is important about that for you ?
Hybrid graphics are a pain with GNU/Linux, that is for certain.
Reference BIOS, the reference for switching is not always clear. For example in some BIOS for switching between Intel and ATI, For intel, set graphics controller to “Switchable” in BIOS and for ATI, set graphics controller to “Discrete” in BIOS. However a brief surf indicated others complained one could not switch graphics in BIOS with this HP EliteBook 8560W.
Still, what is your reference that indicates one can not access the nVidia card ? For example I stumbled across this post on Phoronix:
Perhaps you could ask on Phoronix forum as to how that user manages ?
Reference battery life, GNU/Linux across the board (all distributions) have experienced some major regressions in battery life going back many kernel versions. I typed about it in my BLOG here: GNU/Linux and openSUSE power management regressions - Blogs - openSUSE Forums One boot code that some of us are using to help the power management situation a bit is this boot code command:
pcie_aspm=force
I have NO IDEA if it will help you with your laptop.
What boot codes have you investigated to assist in graphics switching ?
We are looking for volunteers with such hardware to investigate and provide help here. Perhaps you can help ? I note we have a thread going in this page: Hybrid Graphics driver help needed
Have you investigated the vga_switcheroo options ? We need someone to write a good guide for openSUSE. Possibly you could investigate and help ?
Have you looked at any of the nVidia forums for similiar Elitebooks such as the 8540w ? There is an interesting nVidia forum thread here: Blank Screen on HP EliteBook 8540w with NVIDIA driver - Page 3 - nV News Forums …(see post#29)
As you likely guessed, the novell forum is the place to have patience and wait for an answer for SLED. This forum has mostly openSUSE users and not SLED users.
And we need volunteers who have the hardware to write some guides.
Hmmm … it does have hybrid graphics. Any chance you can boot to a liveCD and test before buying ?
[QUOTE=oldcpu;2363399
Please, can you explain what is meant by the optimus technology and how important is it ? Is it just associated with longer battery life ? Is this post about battery life ? or is it about neither the nVidia proprietary driver nor open source nouveau drivers working ?
I note this nVidia page NVIDIA DRIVERS 275.09.07 Certified and this NVIDIA DRIVERS 275.09.07 Certified
which at the bottom of each in the “supported products” tab (for GNU/Linux with the proprietary nVidia graphic driver) has for supported hardware:
Quadro Notebook series:
5010M, 5000M, 4000M, 3000M, 2000M, **1000M**
… but you were pretty definitive that the Quadro 1000M with optimus technology is not supported, so it might help if you explain what is important about that for you ?
[/quote]Optimus technology increases battery life and that’s about it. It’s important because there is no offical support for it in linux. All Nvidia hardware is supported on driver level, however if Optimus can’t be disabled, there isn’t much use for the driver support when you can’t access the graphics card.
Still, what is your reference that indicates one can not access the nVidia card ? For example I stumbled across this post on Phoronix:
I was little bit too hasty, I had lost all hope in getting anwser on Phronix for some reason (I’m the opener of that thread too). The reason why I originally thought that one couldn’t access the nVidia card was that HP tech support couldn’t give me any anwser about the subject and that there wasn’t support for the bios switch which is aside from disabling the Optimus technology all together is the only way of using newer nVidia laptop cards on Linux. The last post also confirms my earlier hypothesis which I for some reason didn’t consider back then. HP has disabled Optimus for Elitebook 8560w entirely (probably for 10bit support) and therefore it also works perfectly with Linux without any changes what so ever.
Hmmm … it does have hybrid graphics. Any chance you can boot to a liveCD and test before buying ?
It doesn’t (if I ain’t mistaken, again) . The graphics card supports hyprid graphics (through Optimus technology) but it’s disabled in BIOS level. The possibility of testing with liveCD would obviosly be nice (just to make sure) and I’ll ask about it.
And we need volunteers who have the hardware to write some guides.
I hope that at some point I can.
Thanks.
I think you mean to say if you can’t access ALL the features of the graphics card ??
If you have short battery life, don’t forget to try the boot code:
pcie_aspm=force
Good luck there, and anything you can contribute reference learning about and figuring how to use this EliteBook 8560W would be appreciated.
Sorry to read HP support did not help much wrt GNU/Linux support for the EliteBook. My own experience with HP (in different areas) is their desktop PC support for GNU/Linux is VERY poor, but their printer support for GNU/Linux is not bad (in comparison).
There is a thread here on how to shutdown the nVidia card with acpi calls: Asus 1215n GPU switching on ubuntu HELP - nV News Forums
That appears to me to be a rather draconian approach, but I post here in this thread mainly for completeness in case anyone does want to consider it.
Edit : This is probably a better thread to look at here: http://linux-hybrid-graphics.blogspot.com/
I recommend you look into “Bumblebee” for GNU/Linux. I ran across this post: Bumblebee brings nvidia optimus GPU switching to Linux users | OMG! Ubuntu!
Where in turn for openSUSE-11.4 someone has packaged this: software.opensuse.org: Search Results and I quote:
Bumblebee is Optimus support for Linux, with real offloading, and not
switchable graphics… More important… it works on Optimus Laptops without a
graphical multiplexer…
My wife is calling me to go shopping, so I have to run. But you could research on that, and possible create a guide if you figure it out. I also posted something similar in another ‘Optimus’ thread.
I also note someone has posted a guide re: bumblebee here: Getting maximum battery time from an ASUS eeePC 1015pn
Reference bumblebee, I think originally it was referred to as ‘prime-ng’ and then later renamed to bumblebee. There is a Phoronix article about it here: [Phoronix] NVIDIA Optimus Unofficially Comes To Linux](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTQxNg)
which references the developers blog here:
Optimus on Linux Problem Solved | Martin Juhl’s Blog
EliteBook 2011 series have the intel graphic card, because it’s built in the I7, but it is disabled
You can take a look at YouTube and Hp itself says it, there’s no optimus in this computer and there’s no way to switch the intel on, the elitebooks are built like that.
I’ve an EliteBook 8560w and I knew that before buying, in fact that was a pros on my decision when I bought it, because I didn’t want to mess with drivers and bios and stuff just to get a single card working 90% of the time.
So maybe you’ll be able to turn that i7 cg on, but even if you do so by modifying the bios, I doubt they wire it correctly to the display and other outputs.
The better way to have an answer is to call or write a letter to HP directly.
Sorry for the bad news though.
[edit] Of course I might be wrong, in this case I really would like to know, because if there’s a way to switch off nvidia and turn on Intel card when I’m just doing docs or internet that would save a lot of power and heat ! So thanks in advance if you guys found something [/edit]