Intel HD 4600 graphics card not supported in Linux Mint 17

Question

I have just installed Linux Mint 17 on my desktop computer with a Intel HD 4600 graphics card. Unfortunately it only supports a low resolution of 1920 x 1200 which looks horrible in contrast to the monitor's native 2560 x 1440.

I have spend 3 hours googling around trying different suggestions without luck. This post looked promising but the suggestions didn't help.

Mint 16 boots up in the correct resolution straight from a LiveUSB so something has changed (upstream probably) between the two versions.

There is a Intel graphics installer but when I run it, it says "Distribution not supported". I can fake an Ubuntu distro by editing lsb-release and then it installs something but still I can't choose the correct resolution in the Displays utility.

According to the Intel download center for HD 4600 there is a driver for Linux. But where on earth is the download link on that page? I really can't find it!

What options are there?

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I have tried forcing a new resolution with xrandr but I get a xrandr: Configure crtc 0 failed when I try to apply the new modes.

Solution 1

I wrote in my questions that I tried to force the mode with xrandr but got an error. I tried to obtain the mode lines with cvt and gtf which appeared to be the way to get these. But none of the obtained mode lines worked, so I gave up on xrandr and tried other solutions.

Actually, I even bought a new graphics card, and while unpacking it, I decided to give the existing card a last chance.

I looked in Xorg.log (like I did several times before) but this time, after trying so many combinations of mode lines, I noticed that the listed mode lines were a bit different than those obtained from cvt and gtf. Interesting!

So I tried these mode lines with xrandr and bingo! I suddenly had a working mode line that forced the resolution into 2560 x 1440.

The last step was to simply add the mode to xorg.conf which looks like this:

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier "HDMI1"
    Modeline "2560x1440x0.0"  241.50  2560 2608 2640 2720  1440 1443 1448 1481 +hsync -vsync
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "HDMI1"
    Device "Card0"
    Monitor "Monitor0"
    SubSection "Display"
        Modes "2560x1440x0.0"
        Depth 24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Solution 2

I had the same problem, and I found a page in portuguese that explains a workaround.

Before running the Intel Installer change your /etc/lsb-release and input those contents:

DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=14.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=trusty
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Linux Mint 17 Qiana"

Install the drivers and revert the changes on the file.

After a reboot:

$ sudo su
# lshw -c video
  *-display               
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: Haswell-ULT Integrated Graphics Controller
       vendor: Intel Corporation
       physical id: 2
       bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
       version: 09
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: msi pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
       configuration: driver=i915 latency=0
       resources: irq:60 memory:b0000000-b03fffff memory:a0000000-afffffff ioport:3000(size=64)

The driver is shown as "i915" that is the module installed. \o/

Comments

[aSystemOverload]

I'd be interested in any feedback you get. I've installed Debian Wheezy on a desktop that has a Gigabyte GA-B85N motherboard with Intel HD4600 Graphics onboard and cannot get it to resume from Standby/Hibernation properly. The HDMI signal to the monitor is non existent so the monitor stays off.

[sam]

Thanks, but I already tried that.