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I never got that weird loop through Nvidia adapter working satisfactorily on Ubuntu so decided on Intel all the way on laptop GPUs - I am not building in 3D or

I never got that weird loop through Nvidia adapter working satisfactorily on Ubuntu so decided on Intel all the way on laptop GPUs - I am not building in 3D or playing games so nothing is missed. Would not mind knowing how it works on your Dell though, do you have to call things differently to use the Nvidia adapter? Bumblebee rings a bell.

Crespyl 9y ago
Back when I had an an "Optimus" laptop with that kind of setup, I had to use bumblebee/optirun/primus (I forget how the parts fit together) to launch programs that I wanted to use the dedicated card with. It worked a little like Wine does, you'd just wrap your program invocation with `optirun <game>` and it would set everything up for you. IIRC it was also possible to combine this with wine, `optirun wine <game>`. The first year after I got the laptop (this was maybe 5-6 years back) support was kind of flaky, but things got smoothed out pretty quickly. Eventually I would just launch Steam with optirun and any programs started by Steam would inherit the dedicated GPU settings. I haven't used a setup like that for a few years now, I'm sure it's only gotten better since. The Arch wiki has a good rundown.
gshulegaard 9y ago
So there is now a proprietary graphics ppa that is (as I understand it) a collaboration between Nvidia and Canonical. You install the nvidia drivers from there and can also install a command line tool called "prime-select". You can then select which "profile" you want to use via: $ sudo prime-select [nvidia|intel] Then a logout and log back in will swap the adapter in use. From there you will be using either the intel or the nvidia chip full time. Bumblebee is an option...but you would have to mark special commands with "optirun" and would be suffering a performance penalty. But it is a good option if you don't want to deal with the logout to swap. For me, I don't mind the logout for swap so I just use the "prime-select" tool. Edit: Here is the ppa: https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers/+archive/ubuntu/ppa https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers/+archive/ubuntu/ppa It looks like there is a bumblebee something in there. Here is a news blurb about it: https://itsfoss.com/ubuntu-official-ppa-graphics/ https://itsfoss.com/ubuntu-official-ppa-graphics/
- Theodores 9y ago
  Thanks for the update, I ran Bumblebee a few times for OpenGL intensive things and the heat management and general perfomance of the Dell XPS (from 5? years ago) was worrying. I also thought the weird loop-through was weird, how the results would be passed back to the built in graphics, plus the ports weren't mapped properly, so you only had two screens on built-in graphics - the Nvidia bit didn't have any connection to the HDMI in Linux mode. So it was far from the effortless high speed awesome graphics expected, every 'bumblebee' invocation had all the convenience of a helicopter ride. Sounds like the prime-select tool is what I needed. Oh well, glad I went from cutting edge SGI Infinite Reality 3D to integrated graphics over the years.

Crespyl 9y ago

Back when I had an an "Optimus" laptop with that kind of setup, I had to use bumblebee/optirun/primus (I forget how the parts fit together) to launch programs that I wanted to use the dedicated card with. It worked a little like Wine does, you'd just wrap your program invocation with `optirun <game>` and it would set everything up for you. IIRC it was also possible to combine this with wine, `optirun wine <game>`. The first year after I got the laptop (this was maybe 5-6 years back) support was kind of flaky, but things got smoothed out pretty quickly. Eventually I would just launch Steam with optirun and any programs started by Steam would inherit the dedicated GPU settings. I haven't used a setup like that for a few years now, I'm sure it's only gotten better since. The Arch wiki has a good rundown.

gshulegaard 9y ago

So there is now a proprietary graphics ppa that is (as I understand it) a collaboration between Nvidia and Canonical. You install the nvidia drivers from there and can also install a command line tool called "prime-select". You can then select which "profile" you want to use via: $ sudo prime-select [nvidia|intel] Then a logout and log back in will swap the adapter in use. From there you will be using either the intel or the nvidia chip full time. Bumblebee is an option...but you would have to mark special commands with "optirun" and would be suffering a performance penalty. But it is a good option if you don't want to deal with the logout to swap. For me, I don't mind the logout for swap so I just use the "prime-select" tool. Edit: Here is the ppa: https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers/+archive/ubuntu/ppa https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers/+archive/ubuntu/ppa It looks like there is a bumblebee something in there. Here is a news blurb about it: https://itsfoss.com/ubuntu-official-ppa-graphics/ https://itsfoss.com/ubuntu-official-ppa-graphics/

Theodores 9y ago
Thanks for the update, I ran Bumblebee a few times for OpenGL intensive things and the heat management and general perfomance of the Dell XPS (from 5? years ago) was worrying. I also thought the weird loop-through was weird, how the results would be passed back to the built in graphics, plus the ports weren't mapped properly, so you only had two screens on built-in graphics - the Nvidia bit didn't have any connection to the HDMI in Linux mode. So it was far from the effortless high speed awesome graphics expected, every 'bumblebee' invocation had all the convenience of a helicopter ride. Sounds like the prime-select tool is what I needed. Oh well, glad I went from cutting edge SGI Infinite Reality 3D to integrated graphics over the years.