Trying to use a second monitor with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 ... not working

[JimG]

I'm trying to add a second monitor (as I've always had with this new laptop). When I do, and mirror the displays, the larger (second) monitor looks like the image below. So far, this is the only thing keeping me from installing Manjaro so I can escape from M$ windows 10 home (where this all works).

System: Lenovo Ideapad L340 Gaming Laptop
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 4GB
Resolution set at 1920x1080, 60 Hz

I suspect that it might be a driver issue. Right now, I'm only running from the install USB boot drive from around April 2020. I had the same issue, however, after installing Manjaro back then, but eventually gave up. I'm not ready to do a final backup on the M$ side before I'm comfortable with it working from either this install disk or creating a new (full) install on a second thumb drive using this install disk, where I'll know everything is fully installed...

Suggestions on how to get this to work? As I said, I KNOW this lapop and its graphics card are happy with each other because they work great together on the M$ side. So does anyone know what I might be missing?!

Thanks,
Jim

IMG_20200809_080636_HDR|666x500

[pobrn]

When you installed Manjaro, have you used nouveau or the proprietary nvidia driver?

[Takei]

Could you provide the output of inxi -Gxxxza --no-host?

[JimG]

Again, I haven't actually installed it yet---just trying to see if I can get the second monitor working first. And as long as the driver gives me full support from the GTX 1050 for GLES2 an GLES3 and all of the card's power, I don't care which driver it ends up being unless there's a difference I don't know about.

[JimG]

Not right now, as I'm back in windows right now getting some work done in Godot 3 for a game.

[Takei]

Ok then..... btw which driver package did you choose in the grub menu when loading the image? There are 2 options there, free and nonfree/proprietary. If you have chosen nothing then you likely ran the free open source driver, which is not recommended for Nvidia. You should choose the proprietary option instead.

[JimG]

If you're referring to when I first created the image on that thumb drive, I have no idea...it's been so long. I don't even remember if I was given an option while burning the Manjaro bootable USB install disk image to the thumb drive. Again, for now, that's all I'm running from.

Or, do I need to install Manjaro (temporarily) to a 32GB thumb drive to actually get this working? I'm starting to think that's going to be the case.....

[Takei]

No it's an option in the menu you get when booting from the drive. If the used .iso is older you might wanna download a newer one before installing, otherwise there might be breakage upon your first update.

[JimG]

I tried. The laptop said there was no boot option. But when I burned the disk, it said it was installing the boot sector. I tried to use the Windows image burner (whatever its name is), Rufus, etc., and none would recognize the thumb drive (I was first tying to use the existing one to just update the image). Then I used a blank one, which did see the drive (I guess it has to be a completely blank disk).

So I'm going to try and start over again.....format the drive as fat32, find out how to install a boot image first, then install the image I downloaded from Manjaro a bit earlier again. OR, maybe the image wasn't a bootable one? I'll check that, too. Just for grins I tried my old Linux Mint install disk. It worked, but apparently doesn't recognize external monitors connected via HDMI cable.

I have to say, back in ca. 1992, when I created my own Linux (as BSD 4.2) from bits and pieces from the sun-something (sunsite?.org) anonymous ftp site, it was so much simpler. A quick kernel rebuild for graphics, etc., and it's up and running. Now, if you can't find it in a menu...... I need Manjaro, because from what I've read, it's the best Linux for gaming and gamedev, with Arch as a very close second. But this is getting very annoying, mostly because this laptop only recognizes its keyboard option to load the boot manager about 30% of the time. And when it does, something still doesn't work.

[Takei]

Yes, most of these image burners basically unpack the .iso on the drive and such take up the whole drive. A newer alternative for that is something like ventoy which you flash on the disk and then you can simply copy the .iso files over, as many as fit, and create a multiboot stick that way. I found it very reliable, compared to the other options, with a number if different distro's .iso files.
Sadly a more customized driver install you need to install the system first.

[JimG]

I was unable to select the NVIDIA drivers (what I believe is referred to as non-free) for my computer that should BE free, because once I use that first menu, this laptop will skip the controls to start with repair settings (ALT-F2), and F12 (to boot into BIOS settings is now ignored, period (or maybe it's only paid attention to every third reboot, too).

So I got the new image (downloaded this morning) to boot by letting that menu timeout and then letting it boot into the Live//Manjaro installation mode. I tried the third option (not the simple installer, but the one that's supposed to walk you through it. About half-way through, it decided to switch from the 32 GB flash drive to my main system drive (which I am most definitely NOT ready to clobber yet). Ok, that method is OUT. The "Install Manjaro" option did things a bit differently---it only gave me one choice: install over my existing system.

I have now spent almost 9 hours on this with no hint of anything even resembling getting close to success. Maybe it's this laptop (Lenovo Ideapad L340 2020 Gaming Laptop) being a d*ck. Maybe it's something else. I don't know. But....I am giving up. Things aren't improving as I go, they're getting more and more insane (and with it, so am I...temporarily, of course).

Thanks for trying, everyone, but this just doesn't seem to want to work out for me.