Re: [gentoo-user] Nvidia and optimus

[Erik Mackdanz <erikmack@gmail.com>]

"J. Roeleveld" <joost@antarean.org> writes:

> On Tuesday, December 16, 2014 05:46:30 PM Erik Mackdanz wrote:
>> Heiko Baums <lists@baums-on-web.de> writes:
>> > I don't know if, but I don't think that, it will work with
>> > x11-drivers/xf86-video-nouveau.
>> 
>> I used bumblebee for quite a while.  It worked okay, but every upgrade I
>> would have to fiddle with it again.
>> 
>> I switched to the Nouveau driver and I'm very glad I did.  "Conventional
>> wisdom" says Nouveau quality is lower than Nvidia, but I found it worked
>> better on some things (Second Life).
>> 
>> As someone else pointed out, with Nouveau the GPU remains on all the
>> time consuming power.  This is the downside.
>> 
>> If ease-of-use and/or open licensing are more important to you than top
>> rendering quality and power consumption, consider using Nouveau.
>
> I've been using bumblebee for over a year now. (First laptop with Optimus) and 
> not had any issues. It always works as advertised.
>
> What issues did you experience?
>
I remember more than once changing bumblebee.conf during an upgrade,
when the service failed to start.  This is over two years ago now, so I
don't remember any more than that.

You could tell me that bumblebee is now stable and rock-solid, but I
still wouldn't switch from Nouveau.  I've had a good experience, and
open source matters to me.

On top of that, this laptop has only a year or so left before I replace
it, and I know now to avoid Optimus entirely in the future.

> --
> Joost
>

-- 
Erik Mackdanz