Viewing topic Nvidia Optimus on Manjaro... is actually working :)

Nvidia Optimus on Manjaro... is actually working :)

Julius Jan 2, 2020

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So I made the switch on my somewhat aging (Geforce 970m) Tuxedo laptop and installed Manjaro KDE... after years on Debian based distributions and a short excursion to SolusOS.

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 January 2020 at 8:19 pm UTC

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Avehicle7887 Jan 2, 2020

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This bit of news should make life a bit easier for my colleagues at work, they occasionally get an nvidia laptop where the client requests Linux. Thanks for sharing

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Julius Jan 2, 2020

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Sooner or later this should of course also work on other distributions and hopefully at some point with Wayland.

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 January 2020 at 10:44 pm UTC

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Redface Jan 3, 2020

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Ubuntu 19.10 and Popos 19.10 have that too, implemented a bit differently. Ubuntu with the mate optimus applet and in popos its in the battery menu, both have command line to switch too, prime-select and system76-power

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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Julius Jan 3, 2020

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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 January 2020 at 9:39 pm UTC

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Julius Jan 3, 2020

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I stand corrected, seems like Ubuntu 19.10 does support it also:
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2019/09/nvidia-optimus-linux-switching-applet

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catbox_fugue Feb 25, 2020

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PRIME does a good job, but its only a one time switch per boot.
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.

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