After some more research I found out that this is actually due to an unimpelmented feature in Nvidia's drivers.
On this model of laptop, the video output ports all connect directly to the discrete Nvidia GPU, and Nvidia's drivers do not yet support the GPU being used as a sink from the integrated GPU and piping the integrated GPU's output to a display. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu-X, which is subscribed to nvidia-graphics-drivers in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1849214 Title: "nvidia on-demand" mode does not support external displays To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-drivers/+bug/1849214/+subscriptions _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-x-swat Post to : ubuntu-x-swat@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-x-swat More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp