External Monitor display on Thinkpad W520 with 12.04

Solution 1:

First of all, I stopped trying with 12.04.3 or 12.04.4 LTS and used 13.10 instead. I believe the LTS versions cannot practically keep up with the ever-changing graphics situation - and I learned the hard way.

Here are the general steps that I took:

1) Install latest intel drivers, hope that intel-virtual-output, which is the integrated version of screenclone. If it's not packaged, compile that stuff from source.
2) In your xorg.conf.nvidia ensure the option preventing external screens is disabled.
3) Xrandr as usual :)

This resource is helpful:

http://www.unixreich.com/blog/2013/linux-nvidia-optimus-on-thinkpad-w520w530-with-external-monitor-finally-solved/

I also created a blog post on this issue for Ubuntu 14.04:

http://blog.lukeswart.net/wordpress/

The latter should also have information to help a beginner when compiling the drivers from source.

PS: As a Linux novice, this process was very time consuming and I can only hope that this post helps someone. Setting up an external monitor on a laptop running Optimus with display ports that are hard-wired to the Nvidia chip is a very discouraging process to a new Linux user.

As a user who needs to use Linux for my work, this whole situation over protecting proprietary Optimus drivers brings embarrassment upon the whole tech community.