I'm having a tough time with my Nvidia drivers on Linux Mint. I'm dual-booting with Windows on an HP Omen laptop that has a 2070 Super Max-Q. On Windows, everything works great, but with Mint, I've hit some frustrating issues. When I try to use any of the proprietary Nvidia drivers, I can't adjust the screen brightness, external monitors aren't recognized at all, and the refresh rate is stuck at 60Hz with other options greyed out. The Nvidia drivers really seem to cause these problems since the Nouveau drivers work fine but offer lower performance. Has anyone else's display been similarly locked? Any ideas on what could be going wrong or how I might fix this?
1 Answer
Hey! It sounds like you might be dealing with some common issues related to how laptops handle graphics. Sometimes, laptops with a dedicated GPU like yours use the integrated graphics for the display while the Nvidia GPU handles external connections. Have you checked the power management settings? Sometimes brightness controls can be adjusted there.
For your external displays, you can run a command in the terminal to check your setup. Install 'inxi' with `sudo apt install inxi`, and then run `inxi -b` to see how your graphics are configured. This should show if the Nvidia driver is being used correctly for your external display. Make sure you're using the right Nvidia driver version, too. It might not be the same as the one you have on Windows, and Mint’s software store should help with that. Good luck!
About the refresh rate, it's not uncommon for the system to limit it, depending on how the integrated graphics manage the load. Keeping an eye on your system resources can help you manage performance better, too!
Great tips! I had similar issues before, and using the right Nvidia driver was key for performance, especially for external displays. Just make sure the driver version in Mint matches the one you have on Windows.