[wplug] Video issues on Lenovo Thinkpad W520 with Fedora 23

[Pat Barron]

So, I have installed Fedora Workstation 23 on a Thinkpad W520, using the 
Fedora 23 network install image.  The install worked fine, all went as 
expected.  During the install, I set up a disk encryption password, 
'cause that is what I'm supposed to do on laptops at the office.  There 
were no problems with any of this, and after downloading all the RPMs 
and installing them, Fedora 23 was (apparently) ready to go.

Then, I rebooted the laptop to start the newly installed system, GRUB 
came up, did the normal countdown, and then booted the kernel.

And then the screen went dark, and it just sat there...

On a hunch, while it was sitting there, I typed the hard drive 
encryption password "blind" (without being able to see what was going 
on), and hit ENTER.  Lo and behold, the hard drive light started 
flashing (the screen is still totally dark at this point), and shortly 
thereafter, the screen came on and showed the GNOME display manager, and 
I could log in.

On another hunch, I shut down the machine, rebooted it, and when GRUB 
came up, typed 'e' to edit the GRUB boot configuration.  At the end of 
the options to the kernel, I added "nomodeset", and let it boot.  This 
time, it displayed the prompt for the hard drive encryption password.  I 
typed it, the kernel started to boot, and I could see the normal kernel 
boot messages coming up on the screen, and then the Fedora boot 
"progress bar" was displayed. Then it started the display manager, and I 
could log in - but the display was all weird, distorted and stretched.  
I don't want to use it like that.

After some searching around, it seems that whatever is going on has 
something to do with the fact that the W520 has two graphics adapter - a 
sort of "normal" Intel integrated graphics controller, and an NVIDIA 
GF108 discrete graphics controller.  I think that is confusing GRUB - 
though at least GNOME and/or Xorg knows how to deal with it, so things 
are OK once the desktop is running. Searching on the web led me to an 
understanding (at least partially) of the problem - but I didn't find 
anything that seemed to be a solution of any kind...

Is there any reasonable way to make this work better?  I mean, I guess I 
can just type the disk encryption password "blind" (since I know what 
it's expecting), and if there are any problems with booting at any 
point, I can boot with the "nomodeset" option so I can then see the 
kernel messages and such.  But it would be nice if it actually worked 
the way it was supposed to, all the time. ;-)

--Pat.