unbreaking stuff

Short answer: no it wasn’t (except for finding new ways to break stuff).

To get some clarity about how the now “official” way to do Optimus on Linux benefits the performance I get out of my card, I ran the Unigine Heaven Benchmark, once with Bumblebee and once with the Nvidia Method:

Results: Using the “official” Nvidia method leads to a result (606 points), which is actually slightly worse than using Bumblebee (608 points), so I’ll probably stay with Bumblebee for quite some time. Thanks for getting my hopes up Nvidia >_<.

For some added trolling, I also tried to run the benchmark on my Intel card, the results weren’t even all that bad:

Starting everything off with the xorg.conf as found at http://http.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/319.32/README/randr14.html.

Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "layout" Screen 0 "nvidia" Inactive "intel" EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "nvidia" Driver "nvidia" BusID "PCI:1:0:0" EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "nvidia" Device "nvidia" # Uncomment this line if your computer has no display devices connected to # the NVIDIA GPU. Leave it commented if you have display devices # connected to the NVIDIA GPU that you would like to use. Option "UseDisplayDevice" "none" #Option "AllowEmptyInitialConfiguration" "Yes" EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "intel" Driver "modesetting" Option "AccelMethod" "sna" EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "intel" Device "intel" EndSection Section "Files" ModulePath "/usr/lib/nvidia/,/usr/lib/xorg/modules/" EndSection

The last section (which is the main difference to the link before) makes sure Xorg actually finds the nvidia-driver (maybe necessary because of bumblebee?)

With this Xorg.conf you will see nothing but a black screen, when you start X, so enter .xinitrc:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/nvidia:/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/nvidia:/usr/lib/nvidia xrandr --setprovideroutputsource modesetting NVIDIA-0 xrandr --auto exec i3

The first line makes it so that applications can use the nvidia-driver. The xrandr-lines tell X to use the nvidia-card for rendering and set the resolution automatically. The last line starts i3, the objectively best window manager in every possible way.

$ sudo modprobe nvidia-current $ sudo /etc/init.d/bumblebee stop $ startx

... and you should be good to go (the first line is obviously only helpful, when bumblebee is installed).

To be able to simply $ startx again after reboot, you can also prevent bumblebee from starting again with

$ sudo systemctl disable bumblebee $ sudo mv /etc/modprobe.d/bumblebee.conf /etc/modprobe.d/bumblebee.conf.bak