new to the Forum, but been using Garuda Bird of Prey since January and I like it very much. Already installed on a gaming laptop and one of my work computers
I just got a cheap old Lenovo Thinkpad P50 and want to bring new life to it with Garuda.
I am familiar with the installation process of Garuda and most Linux distros, but my issue now is that this is my very first laptop with hybrid graphics and I am not 100% sure how to install Garuda on it.
My gaming Laptop (HP Omen from last year) has only an Nvidia card, so I picked the âInstall with Nvidia Driversâ option and so far it works well. My working computer (a newer Levono Thinkpad lol) has an AMD graphic card and I used âInstall with Open Source Driversâ.
So in this case with the Thinkpad P50 and its hybrid graphics (Intel HD Graphics and Nvidia Quadro 2000) I am unsure how to proceed. Has anyone installed Garuda in a similar computer? If yes then I am open to suggestions.
Meanwhile I will try installing with the Open Source drivers first and later manually adding the Nvidia Drivers and enabling PRIME, as suggested in some post I found here and in the Arch wiki.
The overwhelming majority of all 64 bit thinkpads work extremely well on Linux. You shouldnât have much issue at all, if any. Nice computer! (Typing this on my t480s)
UPDATE: thanks to all for the suggestions!!!
After some days of experimentation I found the following:
When installing Garuda with the Open Source Drivers, it later automatically detects the dedicated GPU and allows to install the Nvidia drivers. After all updates and reboot many application are missing permissions and fail to run or display error messages, like Firefox or the console or the file explorer. Tried with KDE Dragonized, XFCE, Cinnamon and Hyprland, same buggy behaviour no matter the desktop environment.
When installing Garuda with the Nvidia drivers from the very beginning, no issues at all, updates and reboot and the OS runs flawlessly just like in my other computers, although I have the feeling that Garuda is using only the dedicated GPU. Am I wrong or just âparanoidâ :-D?
Will reinstall once more, I am just hopping with the different Desktop environments. Would like to have something as simple but efficient as XFCE, but at the same time want to try Hyprland or Sway even if some of the apps I use on a daily basis have issues with Wayland.
At least I can confirm that the installation of Garuda on my P50 works well with the Nvidia Drivers option. Thanks and see you later!
