Chiming in to say I'm curious how this works too, for months I've been saying I'll get a gaming laptop but I always step back and say "I'll wait for Raven Ridge APU".

Avoid Optimus. Nvidia is a mess.

Having had several Nvidia Optimus gaming Laptops over the years (2x Asus & 1x Tuxedo running with Mint or Kubuntu), I have to say that it really isn't that bad as some people claim. It basically works fine, thus isn't as convenient as under Windows.

I could imaging that docking stations might be somewhat unsatisfactory though, as external monitors over HDMI are sometimes a bit flaky (in my experience they sometime require a reboot to work properly).

You have basically two options:

1. Use the official Nvidia prime switching (https://github.com/andrebrait/prime-indicator makes it a bit more convenient), that works 100% of the time, but requires logging out to switch graphics. Admittedly this is more inconvenient than it sounds at first (I also don't dual boot into Wintendo as that is inconvenient as hell), but if you use your laptop primarily stationary/plugged in, you can just keep the Nvidia GPU on and it will work the same as on your desktop.

2. Use the Bumblebee "hack" that allows dynamic switching (most conveniently by modifying the launch parameters in Steam). I used this for many years and it really does good work in hiding the rather complex background work it does, but it isn't really maintained anyone, has always been a bit of a pain to set up and preserve on distro updates, and only works in 95% of the games or so (and doesn't work with Vulkan at all).

These days I would recommend option 1 and just live with the slight inconvenience.

That said, I also think that right now it might be worth waiting a bit for these AMD Raven Ridge APUs or those new Intel/AMD hybrid chips to hit the Laptop market. They should be out for the xmas sales or early next year. Not so much because Nvidia Optimus isn't working, but because the AMD open source drivers are likely the smoother experience in the long run (and are worth supporting on the Freedom aspect alone).

P.S.: Tried updating the Mesa drivers on that Intel Laptop you have? I have this little Intel based GPDWin and with Mesa 17.3 it runs games quite well. Admittedly not the quite the same category.

Thanks for the replies. It sounds like it may not be as easy as I was hoping. I was hoping I would run something like "optirun steam" or something like that and just let steam take advantage of the nvidia GPU. I may just decide to abandon this idea altogether. Perhaps a newer CPU would handle Cities Skylines better, my current laptop (previous gen) seems to have a lot of trouble running it (fan goes crazy, performance is slow). Perhaps Divinity Original Sin will support Intel graphics at some point. I also thought about an external GPU, but I am pretty sure I'd have to reboot every time I want to use it.

Another idea that I was thinking about was making my gaming desktop headless and just running steam in-home streaming. I tested this and it works very well, surprisingly. However, my son has a steam account and as far as I can tell, there is no way to change user easily (either by streaming directly, or using a steam link) so it would be difficult to switch accounts between his and mine.

Quoting: jayI was hoping I would run something like "optirun steam" or something like that and just let steam take advantage of the nvidia GPU.

With Bumblebee it would work like that. You can even configure it on a per game basis in Steam. But see my comments above.
I also forgot to add that Bumblebee will not work with Wayland... but that seems to be not really suitable for gaming yet anyways (especially on Nvidia).

Don't go for optimus is all I can say, O have a laptop that is optimus and I never managed to get HDMI sound working (I'm not a linix newbie).I don't claim that all optimus setups jave such issues bit this technology is a mess and is a gamble for features. Also gaming and laptop will always be like "you need to make a compromise somewhere, either on battery or the performance/overheating issues.

But that's just my opinion :) do whatever you think is best for you

I think I'll avoid Optimus for now. The two games I mentioned not running well is a bummer but it's not the end of the world, I guess.