Even if the Supported Products tab on the driver download page says that GT420M is supported, the Optimus

variants are not supported. From the Additional Inform ation tab: Some designs incorporating supported GPUs may not be compatible with the NVI DIA Linux driver: in particular, notebook and all-in-one desktop designs with sw itchable (hybrid) or Optimus graphics will not work if means to disable the inte grated graphics in hardware are not available. This Optimus design means that the discrete nVidia card is wired into the integr ated Intel GPU and that it's not connected to a monitor at all. I am speaking from experience, I have a GT425M combined with an i5-460M processo r. If there is no BIOS or hardware setting for switching / disabling the card, y ou're throwing away your money. The XPS 15 family does not appear to have any of these features. Although you are able to use the Intel graphics card, you may w ant to use the nvidia card as well because you've paid for it which is not direc tly possible at the moment. You'd better look for another laptop without Optimus. Optimus is crap and Nvidia refuses to provide better support for Linux. If you are adventurous and buy suc h a notebook, visit the Linux Hybrid Graphics blog and subscribe to its Launchpa d mailing list. Visit their wiki for various ways to get such a card (hopefully) working. One method is called Bumblebee which allows you to render programs on your nvidia card. I currently recommend it over other solutions (disclosure: I'm a developer of it). If you've installed the driver from nvidia.com You've made a huge mistake by installing the drivers from nvidia.com. If you wan t to have newer drivers, add the ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates PPA. After installing the nvidia driver from nvidia.com, you may experience loss of a ll graphics effects, black screen or very slow graphics performance. Uninstallat ion instructions: Boot into recovery mode by holding Shift before booting and choosing for the recovery option In the following menu, choose for netroot. Uninstall nvidia: nvidia-uninstall Remove the configuration file generated by nvidia if any: rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf Reinstall the Mesa package for GL: apt-get --reinstall install libgl1-mesa-glx When done, reboot with: reboot Installation instructions for Bumblebee If you have installed Bumblebee or Ironhide before, be sure to check the instruc tions on http://wiki.bumblebee-project.org/Upgrading-on-Ubuntu

Since Bumblebee version 3.0 "Tumbleweed", it can disable the NVIDIA card in a sa fe way to save power (press release). You can also run programs using the discre te card for better performance. Installation instructions: Add a PPA containing recent drivers as the one in the Natty repository is ou tdated: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates Add the Stable Bumblebee Releases PPA and install Bumblebee using the propri etary NVIDIA driver: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bumblebee/stable sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install bumblebee bumblebee-nvidia If you have 32-bit applications like Wine, and run 11.10 Oneiric or later, y ou will need extra libraries: sudo apt-get install virtualgl-libs:i386 Allow yourself to use Bumblebee by adding yourself to the 'bumblebee' group. (replace $USER by your username) sudo usermod -a -G bumblebee $USER Reboot or re-login to apply the group changes If you'd like to run a program on the nvidia card now, use the optirun program: optirun firefox & See also https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bumblebee Notes: Using acpi_call manually is deprecated. By default, it won't survive suspend . Do not use ppa:mj-casalogic/bumblebee or the MrMEEE/bumblebee-Old-and-abando ned git, it's not maintained anymore and contains a lot of errors. Martin Juhl forked the original Bumblebee to Ironhide, but in my opinion it should not be used because the design flaws from the original Bumblebee are stil l present and the "power management" features are not stable (the wrong methods, _ON and _OFF, are used). Installation is still a mess, your installation may be broken after removing it. If you do not want to use the nvidia card nor Bumblebee If you've accidentally installed the nvidia driver (i.e. using the jockey), you' ve two choices: Uninstall the driver (package nvidia-current) Set the default OpenGL libraries as described in this bugreport