[Closed] Linux crew

Have you tried just going to your graphics card venders website and looking for drivers there? Nvida have excellent linux support avid was sketchy but even they are not too bad now.

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS is out now so if you're hanging on to 12.04 for LTS I'd recommend an update. It's come on quite a lot in the last two years - and I'd be suprised if performance doesn't improve with an update (In my case 14.04 feels quicker than 13.10 on an oldish netbook).

If you're using 12.04 for other reasons (Need an old kernel perhaps?), then I use this PPA for ATI and Nvidia drivers, I'm sure it's good for Intel too:

[url= https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-x-swat/+archive/x-updates ]X-updates[/url]

You can add that, then "sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade" to update all packages.

What card you got? Nvidia/ATI/Intel?

lspci | grep -i VGA

ATI is a PITA
As above Nvidia much better for Linux

What does this command show at the moment?

glxinfo | grep rendering

Opengl is just the framework/spec IIRC and there are different implementations of that...

http://www.reidmiller.name/content/some-annoyances-after-updating-ubuntu-1310

This might help... Ubuntu/Unity was too horrific for me.. and also I found myself needing to learn Red Hat based distros

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS is out now so if you're hanging on to 12.04 for LTS I'd recommend an update.

12.04 is the approved one for work - they are working on the work-approved packages for 14.04 currently, I think. An upgrade will happen.

I'm on kernel 3.11.

I said Intel in the OP 🙂

glxinfo | grep rendering

direct rendering: Yes

What happened was, I was trying to get dual monitors working under bumblebee (yes, I've been struggling with Optimus) and failed. I followed some guy's instructions on the internet which didn't quite work - involved patching the intel driver. But I've rolled it back, comprehensively, and the driver works fine and is stable but as soon as I do anything opengl related - boom. Using Optimus works ok.

Opengl is just the framework/spec IIRC and there are different implementations of that

Yep, libGL.so is just an implementation of the OpenGL spec that your graphics card vendor provides. This will be packaged with whatever driver you have installed, so probably fglrx for ATI, nvidia-current for Nvidia, and xserver-xorg-video-intel for intel. I think that because Intel drivers are open source it gets packaged as part of XServer just because it can be.

You may be able to do something like

sudo apt-get install --reinstall xserver-xorg-video-intel

To force a reinstall

Oh god you're using bumblebee, I have no experience with that so I'm going to have to declare myself out.

Good luck!

EDIT: But I'd check that /usr/lib/libGL.so has been reinstalled and is not the patched one you compiled, also before executing anything, try running ldd on it and check it's linked to the correct library, and maybe do a sudo ldconfig

(yes, I've been struggling with Optimus)

The one time I encountered Optimus.. I thought I don't have time for this... and disabled it in the BIOS

Not the most helpful comment I know...

Oh god you're using bumblebee,

And this was my reaction too 😆

+1 to the "dear lord bumblebee" brigade.

I've a degree and phd in CS, worked with Linux for about 12 years. I know my 3d stuff, I work with 3d engines relatively regularly.

And on my work machine, I go "bugger this" disable the intel gpu and just run the discrete one.

What machine? Multiple monitors can introduce special horrors - it's common for the intel or discrete gpu to only drove certain outputs.

Bumblebee was working fine before I tried this. The OS only sees the intel card unless you run optimus, so it's not an issue here.

But I'd check that /usr/lib/libGL.so

I don't have that, I only have

libGL.so.1 -> /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/mesa/libGL.so.1

It doens't complain about anything missing though - it just freezes. How do I know if that's the right version? Delete it then re-install?

The reason for bumblebee is battery life - 5.5 hours vs 3 hours is worth it. I may just disable nVidia permanently though since for the benchmarks I've run (and Half Life 2) actually give better performance under Intel. I need external monitors very occasionally, so I'll just have to reboot. Maybe I can set up Grub to use nVidia only.. somehow, save having to go into the bios. But that's another day.

Sorry I'm being daft, Optimus = nvidia. There really are likely only certain "magic" combinations of outputs that can be driven by either GPU.

Force a reinstall of anything Mesa, but remove any crazy PPAs etc you may have added first.

What you seeing in /var/log/messages

or /var/log/syslog

and /var/log/Xorg.log

Umm.. nothing in syslog, I get the 'stuck in render ring' message in the X log though. This is apparently common in lockups, but most people experiencing lockups are having random freezes in normal desktop usage, but I don't get this. Only instant lockup whenever I use opengl.

Maybe I can set up Grub to use nVidia only.. somehow, save having to go into the bios. But that's another day.

I looked into this, and decided I had better things to do with my life.

I just toggle in the bios when I want to force intel for the battery life, but on a machine used for heavy compute and a serious CPU I'm generally stuffed for battery anyway so may as well run the big GPU (and it's needed to drive my externals, and MUST drive some outputs directly, not just render than transfer like Optimus does - probably the cause of your issues). M4700 here.

This is a Lenovo W520.

I might give nVidia another try - might be better now I've got laptop-tools configured nicely. Hwoever last time I booted up in discrete mode that was all to cock as well - low res login.

Doing a dist-upgrade with the X-updates. 50mb of stuff downloading...