A working Nvidia Optimus monitor setup!

I finally have a working setup for multiple displays on a linux setup for my Thinkpad T430. I’ve been meaning to kick the windows bucket for quite some time; the only thing keeping me going back to windows was the graphics support for my Nvidia Optimus setup. I know, I’ll go with the integrated setup next time… but this is what I have to work with.

Here is the stackoverflow thread that provides the solution that I used.

Essentially, Ubuntu 14.10 comes with a newer intel driver which includes a program called intel-virtual-output, which really simplifies the whole multiple monitor setup.

Here are the commands I run:

# Power on the nvidia card with bumblebee.
# modprobe bbswitch
# echo ON > /proc/acpi/bbswitch
#
# # Run X display :8 on the nvidia card.
# optirun true
#
# # Tell the intel card to create virtual screens on :0 and
# # copy whatever they're displaying to equivalent screens on :8
# intel-virtual-output

After running the intel-virtual-output program, the displayport adapter should come on active. The display starts as mirrored, so I fire up the display GUI and un-mirror and configure my displays from there. Note that xrandr might be a useful tool if you want to save your setups.