Nvidia Optimus with Ironhide

So for those of you like me who have a laptop with Nvidia Optimus that want to game on Linux usually you would be quite stuck with Nvidia not supporting Optimus on Linux at all.

So you would either be lucky and have a BIOS option to turn off the integrated Intel graphics or like me be unlucky and have no BIOS option and be stuck using the Intel graphics (which in recent years aren't so bad and are starting to actually perform better - but then there's the S3TC issue which is a whole 'nother thing with open source graphics).

Thankfully there is now a semi-decent solution which upon my own testing in the last month has proven for me to work really well.

The Bumblebee Project & Ironhide
Okay so there are two choices both of which use something called VirtualGL (they install it for you though don't worry).

1) The Bumblebee Project is a "stable" but upon watching it for some time, it is a slowly developed solution which in my own testing didn't work with all games. One advantage is they support more than just Ubuntu.

2) Ironhide which is even more bleeding edge than the above but I have yet to find a game that doesn't work with it :), Ironhide is also much more configurable and just in my opinion overall a much better choice - one drawback is that it is near enough exclusive for Ubuntu.

Running Ironhide & The Bumblebee Project

Once installed all you do is run games (and whatever else you need) with the "optirun" command. Some games like Minecraft for example need a bit of trickery though and are not as simple;

To give an example, running Dungeons of Dredmor would be as simple as doing say
optirun desura_launch_Play.sh
(In the games folder - this example uses the game installed via Desura).

Where as Minecraft needs something along the lines of this:
optirun java -jar '/home/liam/Downloads/minecraft.jar'

In my tests it didn't work with OpenJDK only with Sun Java 6, you can check which is set to default on your system by doing:
java -version

You can replace of course the address with wherever your minecraft .jar file is located. Pop the above in a text file, rename to say "minecraft_launcher" or something and make it executable and voila an easy to use launcher to run it on your Nvidia chip!

To be fair you can do the exact same on anything just pop "optirun something" in a text file, make it executable and there you have a launcher.

I am actually shocked at how easy this makes using Optimus! Be sure to support the developer in any way you can for this amazing work!

I hope someone, somewhere finds it useful other than me, as i understand it - Optimus is a big problem with lots of manufacturers using it and like in my case not advertising it anywhere until the unit is turned on and setup so you cannot get a refund....but this saved my day! So this is a chance for me to give a little back :) Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.