Re: [gentoo-user] Nvidia and optimus

["J. Roeleveld" <joost@antarean.org>]

On Wednesday, December 17, 2014 12:53:10 PM behrouz khosravi wrote:
> > What would you consider better support?
> > The way it works currently is how it's working with MS Windows (as
> > provided by
> > NVidia).
> 
> What I mean by better support is easy install and configuration. In the
> Windows
> I just install the driver and the driver is responsible for offloading or
> switching the chips.
> I spent a couple of hours to configure it and gave up, because it is not
> easy to configure or
> even easy to troubleshoot.

It is still easy:
emerge bumblebee
rc-update add bumblebee default

That's all I did and it works.

With Linux, I just add "optirun " in front of the command in the program-menu 
item.
On MS Windows, I need to:
1) Start the program
2) Stop the program
3) Configure the driver to use the NVidia chipset for the program (It doesn't 
show in the list before I start it once)

And for a lot of these, I need to redo it every time I update the drivers.

> > A single GPU makes things simpler, but being able to have the best of both
> > options:
> > 1) Intel = low power = long battery life
> > 2) Nvidia = good quality 3D, but shorter battery life
> > 
> > The NVidia chip is actually switched off when not being used. (Or if not,
> > I
> > wouldn't notice as the battery life is significantly better after
> > installing
> > bumblebee and running the bumblebee service.)
> 
> Thats right for the current setup, but it is possible to have a laptop with
> a powerful Intel GPU, right?

If there is a powerful Intel GPU. But those don't come close to the specs 
NVidia and ATI put into the real GPUs.

--
Joost