[TriLUG] replace laptop graphics card

Thomas Ingram thomas at ravinggenius.com
Wed Dec 8 10:17:46 EST 2010


Several months ago I purchased a Sony VPCF1 laptop and set it up to
dual-boot with Windows and Ubuntu. In Ubuntu (10.10) almost everything
"just works", except for the graphics. The card that came with the
laptop is:

$ lspci | grep VGA
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GT218 [GeForce
310M] (rev a2)

I have had several things not work or not work well, and I think all
issues are traceable to Sony's choice of graphics card. For instance,
I have grown accustom to the following:
* Full screen Flash is too slow to be viewable. Occasionally I have
zoomed my browser so the Flash would fill the screen without issue.
Downloaded videos play full screen without issue.
* External monitors: I can extend my display to external monitors and
get native resolutions on both laptop and monitor. When I mirror my
screen, the both monitors always runs at VGA resolution.
* My laptop must be plugged into the wall charger for the screen back
light to work. Only if I am logged in; the bootup and login screens
are fine when unplugged, but halfway through the login process the
backlight turns off if I'm not plugged in. Plugging in after the fact
doesn't help either. This wasn't an issue with Ubuntu 10.04.

I am using the nouveau driver. Every attempt to install nVidea's
proprietary driver has failed. Therefore I am looking for a
replacement card. I am hoping someone can help point in the direction
of a laptop card that *works* with Linux. I prefer to use open source
drivers, but I don't care if at least some issues are resolved.

-- 
Thomas Ingram ><>



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