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What made me switch is that Manjaro promises to actually support the new Nvidia Optimus GPU switching just as well or even better than in the old Bumblebee days.
And tell you what, it actually does! If you have a Nvidia Optimus laptop and want live switching between your Intel and Nvidia GPU, don't look any further than Manjaro.
It can install a nice tool for Arch based distributions called Optimus-Manager (and a indicator called Optimus-Manager-qt).
And while the new Nvidia Prime GPU switching only works with Turing/Coffee-Lake combinations for full power saving, it does allow going to a low power state on older GPUs using BBswitch, just like Bumblebee (but without the overhead and better Vulkan support).
After installing/configuring all you need to do is to switch to "hybrid" mode and add this launch parameter to Steam games:
__NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1 __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia __VK_LAYER_NV_optimus=NVIDIA_only %command%Super cool :)
Last edited by Julius on 2 Jan 2020 at 8:19 pm UTC
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But I think I'll use this Laptop a bit longer and then switch to a AMD or equally fully FOSS solution. But still... nice that Nvidia finally made this finally available.
Last edited by Julius on 2 Jan 2020 at 10:44 pm UTC
I do not know if either of those integrates bbswitch automatically, does optimus-manager do that?
There should also be a rightclick menu entry to start a program with those environment variables, is there any DE with or without an extra extension that has that already?
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I think Ubuntu is still using the old system that requires restarting the X.org server (logout), or can you now also switch seamlessly?And yes optimus-manager has bbswitch support build in.
Last edited by Julius on 3 Jan 2020 at 9:39 pm UTC
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https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2019/09/nvidia-optimus-linux-switching-applet
i've always used prime because the minor hassle of telling software/games what card i want to use is a bit tedious
intel i7-3940xm & Nvidia 680m/980m/1060m/1070m <-
"prime-select query"
"prime-select nvidia/intel"
done.
however good to know the progress of seamless switching is progressing.