u/Brownie_Boi

Switching to linux on my Alienware m15 r7 AMD has been a nightmare. It's a hybrid nvidia/amd laptop and I have been struggling to stop it from freezing up anytime I do any of the following:

- Plug/unplug an external monitor while running (HDMI)

-Change HDMI source on said external monitor

-Sleep/restart/shutdown my laptop

Any of these actions will freeze the laptop screen and will take no actions anymore. Fans and lights will still be running but a hard power off is required to reboot. I can get the monitor to work sometimes if it is turned on and plugged in while booting up?

I have tried both Nobara and Kubunto and both have the same issues. I'm starting to lose hope that my laptop is just not compatible with linux and I will just have to go back to Windows but really don't want to.

The testing I did on Nobara seemed to suggest that the Nvidia gpu would just cease to exist once the monitor was plugged in somehow.

nvidia-smi would give me No devices were found. And xrandr would no longer show any HDMI outputs. If the monitor was in a state where it was connected, these commands would behave as intended.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! :/

I switched from Windows 11 to Nobara using the Official NVIDIA ISO on my Alienware m15 r7 AMD laptop. I have some key issues that I really need help with as someone new to Linux. I am getting very inconsistent behaviours when booting. Sometimes when shutting down/restarting it will hang on grey terminal screen and force me to hard power off the device. I have an external monitor connected via HDMI that will sometimes work fine upon booting, but other times it will just not be detected at all by my laptop. If I boot without it plugged in and then plug the monitor in it will sometimes just not register it at all and other times it will just freeze my entire laptop and force another hard power off. When it is in its working mode, if I ever switch HDMI it will either freeze again, or completely disconnect until I reboot in its “working” mode again. Whether it is working or not feels completely random to me. When it is working, typing nvidia-smi into the terminal will produce the expected table but the second I plug/unplug/change HDMI input on the monitor it will output “No devices were found”. Another issue is with sleep mode. When I close my laptop screen and reopen it the lights and fans are still on but it will refuse to display anything other than a black screen or register any inputs until I hard power off. I have tried reinstalling graphics drivers and such for a while now but I am not really too sure where else to start.