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Re: Noob Guidance Requested: Vostro 3400

 

On 03/03/2011 11:09 AM, Peter Goodall wrote:
The fact of the matter is that X has some major architectural
challenges that will not allow it to hot swap the video card without
restarting X.  There is work to be done on many fronts, and lists like
this help developers communicate about how to solve the myriad of
issues and users to post data on their experiences with the hardware.
OK lets be productive.

I think that if you do a survey you will probably find out that although 100% of the people would like to have on the fly switching just as another show off feature, but only 5% of them would really need it according to their work pattern. Most of the people on this list came here for a solution to completely turn off the discrete card in order save as much battery as possible. Most of the latest talks are about how much power is wasted in one mode, and how much in another.

I like to keep things separate, so in order to be post productive, I will ask two separate questions. I have a HP Pavilion dm4t-1100 with Intel i5-460M CPU with Intel / ATI 5470HD combination. Which distribution (Ubuntu ?.?? or any other) will allow me to do these two things:

a) I would like to use the discrete gpu 100% of the time with ATI drivers.
b) When I work on battery I would like to have every possible power saving and have world-record battery life. Everything off except LibreOffice (maybe AbiWord or even GoogleDocs would be enough), Firefox, Thunderbird, Skype and wireless.

I am willing to even install separate distributions on separate partitions or even use an USB or live CD for this because I need to switch only when I'm travelling. Which setup would be the best for this?

I have the laptop for 1 month and still havent found a way to do a)



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