Ok, I guess this question was asked a lot in the whole *nix universe (yes, I'm a windows kid), so any advise to already answered topics are appreciated, but I'm still can't get my head around it. So, sorry in advanced for those, who think "this again?", please - advice me where to look for an answer.
Back to topic: So I got this Toshiba Satellite C50-A-185 inherited from my deceased grandfather, and as many of modern day notebooks, it has this ugly Intel HD and nVidia combo linux struggles with (I guess that's why such devices not sold with linux pre-installed (or as bare hardware without windows)).
Where did this all started? I wanted to try Slackware, just to see what it is and where suse comes from - and as usual - startup virtual box - read instructions how to pxe boot it (yea, I really like this whole "just plug in the network cable" style of diskless booting) ran the installer (oh, I had my fun already with getting it installed) just to find out - slackware really doesn't like virtual box. Starting from it somehow randomly fails to download the packages from a reliable source (it even struggled to read the iso mounted as virtual drive) over to wired config issues caused by vbox is not that great on emulating and finally to end up with vbox's graphics emulation isn't suitable for slackware - so you won't get ANY window manager to run.
Disappointed from not being able to test slackware in a VM I decided to use real hardware and came up with the one choice I couldn't had picked worse - my notebook which includes not only one but two gpus - a setup I had never experienced as all my system over the past decade were AMD based systems with only a dedicated amd gpu (or ati before ati was bought by amd and they started to join the drivers and its control-panel). Result: due to this unusual combo of cpu-integrated graphics core (you can't call it a "gpu") and the dedicated nVidia gpu - slackware was unable to detect any of those and just prompted me with error messages telling me, that X can't run cause my system doesn't have any gpu and was therefore classified as headless. CHEERS!
In Windows it runs fine - it detects both graphic units, installs their drivers just fine, and is able to switch between both depend on if 2D or 3D is required. Linux, well, not so much.
I don't really know how this whole X stuff works at all, but as most linux distributions are basically a pile of some different random software packs playing somewhat nicely together - drivers where always an issue - especially graphic drivers. I guess that's why gaming is just coming after valve hit big impact when "steam os" was still a thing (is it still? I think it's no longer maintained).
From my long experience of building systems and being "the it-guy" for my friends, I know a few rules how to get a clean windows up and running - and that it's recommended to get latest drivers from device manufactures or oem support site (although in some rare cases it's better to go old-skool and use supplied driver-disks coming with the hardware - only had that twice in past 15 years). So, I went to intel.com and nvidia.com to get current drivers - Intel seems not to even care about customers using "supposed to be used with windows only"-hardware with anything else but windows - and therefore doesn't even list anything near *nix as compatible or driver related (this story turns 180 when you look for server hardware (the kind supermicro likes to use)) - and nvidia just delivers a binary file - just as I'm used to from windows.
As drivers usually run in kernel mode (yes, that's also a thing in the windows world - and therefore also requires "elevated privileges" from "local administrator" - that's far away from "root on windows", as windows has some wired additional administrative user accounts - and "administrator" isn't near the top - but just a bit elevated over normal user) - I know to install them one required administrative privileges - so, init S it is (yes, I was dump enough to try updating a graphics driver in init 5 - lesson learned) - and it looked like it made some progress - but using nvidia binary driver just gets me to a point where when the systems switches to X - it messes up cause it tries to use the nvidia driver and chip - and the hardware itself only uses the intel one cause desktop is just 2D.
A few hours later I got a hint from nvidia website: you can add a repo provided by nvidia itself
http://download.nvidia.com/opensuse at let zypper do the magic - yea, at least it gets so far to block nouveau (TBH: what idiot came up with this ****? Didn't the IT-world learned from the mistake when microsoft introduced standard vga/vesa drivers with it's WDDM thing?), at least tried to build a kernel module - which still fails to get build even after all pre-requirements met - I can't get any reason from the logs - and when in X all hwinfo lists is "yea, there is something nvidia stuff related, but drivers not loaded - cause something failed - and somehow the intel chip has to do all the work".
Short: I'm out of ideas and tired of google around for any help to somehow get this intelHD/nvidia combo running like it should and like it does in windows - both chips active, both drivers loaded properly, and depended on what needs to get rendered switch on the fly between 2D and 3D. The easy solution didn't worked, the manual one even less, and re-installing at least gets me back to something desktop-ish without 3D acceleration. Would be cool if someone could guide me how to get this done and make it work on opensuse.
And yes, sure I asked google - but most you can find is just for ubuntu. So, it seems to somehow work in the debian world - why it shouldn't work in the slack world?
Matt
