Linux and integrated\discrete video card?

Question

linux

Greetings!
Guys, in the near future I plan to buy a laptop, the choice fell on the intel core i3 core price \ requirements, the chip has an integrated video card, so here are a couple of questions:
1. how about drivers for intel video cards?
2. if you take a laptop, where else is a discrete nvidia video card, how does linux cope with switching between them? I’m not very good at this, but as I understand that it is possible to switch through the BIOS, and also programmatically turn on the discrete VK under heavy loads.
3. What would you take? Requirements for the video card: comfortable to work in the environment of gnome3 in the future and office applications.

Answer 1

The points:

1. How about drivers for intel video cards?

Fine

2. if you take a laptop, where else is a discrete nvidia video card, how does linux cope with switching between them? I’m not very good at this, but as I understand that it is possible to switch through the BIOS, and also programmatically turn on the discrete VK under heavy loads.

The article is right here on Habré. A little tinkering - and everything will be fine.

3. What would you take? Requirements for the video card: comfortable to work in the environment of gnome3 in the future and office applications.

Considering precisely these requirements, I would take it only with the built-in Intel video card. Seriously. Less problems with video/full screen video and flash, sufficient performance for any compiz.

Answer 2

most importantly, do not take with an ati card, in your case there will be no problems

Answer 3

1. everything is fine if the video can work through KMS. The ones on poulsbo (GMA in acer van) are stupid. Intel hd 5700, for example, runs great
2. can't cope. The second one I have is 310M, it generally works somehow crookedly by itself =)
Although people made it work with hellish scripts, the performance is still dull and turning it off on the fly causes a drop in Xs.
3. Asus u35jc. Enough powerful Intel inside. Compiz, hd0180 - fly. Plays great in Urban Terror.
By the way, things are much better with switching between two ATI video cards, and this is possible in principle. But Nvidia + Intel is a bad thing.

Answer 4

I have Samsung Q330, Ubuntu 10.04. Intel works right away and the “lspci” command shows that there is NVidia. How to use this NVidia is still unclear. Kernel 2.6.32. I understand that you need to change the kernel to 2.6.34+ and then you can enable / disable video cards. If the hands reach the kernel update or up to 10.10, I'll write how it is.
By the way, I don't have any settings in Bios about video.