How To Configure A Lenovo Thinkpad T530 With Docking Station For Dual Monitors in Ubuntu

At my day job I have a pretty awesome Lenovo T530 laptop, and up until yesterday I was running Windows 7 on it. I decided to install Bauer-Puntu 13.04 on it instead, and for anything Windows related I would use Remmina to RDP to a server, or use a Windows 7 VM in Virtualbox.

By default the T530 has Nvidia Optimus enabled in the bios which is great for Windows 7 or Windows 8, but it doesn't work so well in Ubuntu. I have read where people had success using Bumblebee to make Ubuntu play well with it, but I didn't have any luck. So this is how I got dual monitors to work for me

• Switch to discrete graphics mode in your bios






• Install the latest Nvidia drivers from the Ubuntu repositories
  
  sudo apt-get update
  sudo apt-get install nvidia-current
• Edit your grub config and append nox2apic after "quiet splash"
  
  sudo nano /etc/default/grub
  
  Change
  
  GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
  
  
  to:
  
  GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nox2apic"



• Update grub
  
  sudo update-grub



• Reboot

After I did that I was able to go into the Nvidia X Server Settings and setup  my screens to use TwinView.

Did you get it to work a different way? Were you successful with Bumblebee? If so, what did you do differently? Let us know in the comments.