Hello all, I am going totally mad trying to get my new laptop working
properly under Debian.
I have bought a new Acer Nitro 5 AN517-51-77XR laptop both for work
(using Debian) and some gaming (Windows dual-boot). It has both an Intel
integrated GPU as well as an Nvidia GTX 1650 mobile GPU. I cannot get an
external monitor to work, no matter what I try. I'm going mad here.
My goal: A working gnome desktop across two monitors: the internal
monitor and one external monitor connected via HDMI. I don't care about
3D performance. I just want to use two screens.
I have tried using the nouveau drivers, the nvidia-driver package from
buster stable and the nvidia drivers from buster-backports. The internal
display works fine (using the Intel GPU) but never the external monitor.
If I add "nomodeset" as boot option, the login manager never shows. I
just get the last output from the boot process.
Using nouveau, xrandr sees two providers (no idea which is which) but
just one monitor:
$ xrandr --listproviders
Providers: number : 2
Provider 0: id: 0xe0 cap: 0xf, Source Output, Sink Output, Source
Offload, Sink Offload crtcs: 3 outputs: 1 associated providers: 0
name:modesetting
Provider 1: id: 0x44 cap: 0x2, Sink Output crtcs: 4 outputs: 1
associated providers: 0 name:modesetting
Monitors: 1
0: +*eDP-1 1920/381x1080/214+0+0 eDP-1
My guess is the HDMI is wired to the nvidia card, not the intel card (as
in many current laptops). So, I try setting the provider output:
xrandr --setprovideroutputsource 1 0
Now xrandr still sees 1 monitor:
$ xrandr --listmonitors
Monitors: 1
0: +*eDP-1 1920/381x1080/214+0+0 eDP-1
But going to "settings -> display" through Gnome it suddenly sees two
monitors. So, I try to setup the joined desktop there.
This is where it gets strange. The external monitor is still blank, but
I can move my mouse cursor there and I see it there. But if I move a
window to it, it disappears. Only the cursor moves from the internal to
the external screen. If I cange another setting on the external monitor
(like the refresh rate) the external monitor will shop the desktop
background image (blue swirls) and my cursor. Still, windows moved over
it will disappear (and reappear when moved back).
Setting the displays to mirrored instead of joined is weirder. It shows
my desktop on both monitors and shows my cursor on both, but aside from
the cursor, the image on teh external monitor is never updated. It is as
if changing the display config in through the settings menu will display
one still frame on the external monitor and then only updates the mouse
cursor.
Using the proprietary nvidia drivers (either stable or from backports)
has even less success. I had to disable secure boot to even load the
drivers, if they loaded at all. Some combinations between kernel and
driver version (5.5.0-bpo, 5.4.0-bpo and stable 4.19 kernel with both
drivers) do not load at all and modprobe gives an error. Even when it
does load then xrandr still sees only 1 provider, not 2.
I'm going mad here :-( Can someone please help?
Kind regards,
--
Sander Marechal
