Need some assistance in getting nvidia to work on XPS 15.

English Hardware
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Hello All. I need assiatance in getting nvidia drivers to run on my laptop using openSUSE 15. I currently double boot 42.3 with windows 10. I don’t use nvidia drivers with openSUSE 42.3 since it seems to work fine without them. However, I get a bad video lag when I use openSUSE 15, files, pictures studder badly when I drag them across my screen. I figured the nouveau drivers may not be optimized for my laptop and considered going to nvidia full time.

My laptop is a Dell XPS 15 9560 equipped with an i7-7700 CPU, a nvidia geforce gtx 1050 video card and a 4k screen, I do a lot image processing using daz and gimp. Because it is a Dell, I don’t have the option to turn off my intel GPU in the BIOS. I have followed several iterations from the openSUSE wiki site for installing nvidia drivers (using yast, installing Bumblebee and “the hard way” of manually installing the driver), none prove fruitful, I get a frozen screen or X fails to boot at all. Other distros had similar video problems with exception to Ubuntu. Ubuntu nvidia installation was easy and had no issues. Switching between nvidia and intel was easy and seamless. I would have stayed with Ubuntu but new problems arose with Ubuntu that I didn’t have with openSUSE, like time zone differences between Win 10 and Ubuntu and worst, losing control of my keyboard lights, it would flick back on no matter how I tuned it off (via the BIOS). I’m guessing these new problems are due to the use of systemd since I get this problem with all the ubuntu flavors.

So, if anyone can point me in the right direction on getting nvidia to work on my XPS laptop using openSUSE 15, I would be grateful. I would prefer to keep 42.3 but I know the end is coming for this version. I have used Slackware for many years but since getting this laptop, I needed to use a newer kernel to support the UEFI booting and PCI-e setup and the stable version of slackware is just to darn old.

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Problems with Optimus hardware seem more common in 15.0 than 42.3, but based on other forums, Optimus trouble isn’t limited to openSUSE. If you haven’t already seen it, take a look at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Optimus for additional guidance.

Before attempting to install proprietary driver, please check if you are using the default driver named “modesetting”. Most installations do not use the default driver by default, because it is overridden by an optional driver that is older but usually installed as part of a pattern. If xf86-video-nouveau is installed, try removing it to see whether or not non-FOSS software is really needed. Be sure when you boot expecting to use the modesetting driver that your linux kernel cmdline in Grub does not include nomodeset or nouveau.modeset=0. Attempting to install NVidia driver may have left one of them remaining. If there it can be removed per boot at the Grub menu using the e key. Persisting configuration removal is via /etc/default/grub and building new grub.cfg.

If run from within X

inxi -Gxx

will report all drivers in use: kernel, DDX, OpenGL, etc. You likely will find inxi not already installed, but it is available in OSS repo.

15.1 is due around the time 42.3 support expires. It may pay to wait, for better Optimus support.

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Thanks mrmazda, for your input. For install on both versions 15 and 42.3 I have to use “nomodeset” otherwise the installs would freeze at the green fill bars which I believe the installation program is scanning my system and choking on the dual graphic setup.