Ubuntu – Are Optimus Notebooks working properly on Ubuntu 14.04

14.04bumblebeenvidianvidia-optimusnvidia-prime

I'm a long term Debian/Ubuntu user, but recently I aquired an Optimus Notebook (which has 2 video cards: an Intel integrated video card + a Nvidia dedicated video card) and I find out that it simply won't work properly on Debian Jessie and Ubuntu 13.10, even with Bumblebee. I finally got it working on OpenSUSE 13.1 + Bumblebee, I can play any game I want directly from Steam – which is kind of a dream comming true lol. But I like .deb distros :/

What about the recently launched Ubuntu 14.04? Do Optimus Notebooks work properly now? Could someone who have an Optimus Notebook tell your experience using it to play games in this new Ubuntu release? Does Bumblebee or Nvidia-prime work properly?

Best Answer

I'm using 14.04 on an Asus N76VB with a NVIDIA GeForce 740M.

Every time I try to install Bumblebee I end up with a totally broken system at least once. When this happened on my fresh 14.04 installation I read something about nvidia-prime, and decided to give it a try.

Installation is really easy. Just install the NVIDIA driver using the GUI or the CLI (sudo apt-get install nvidia-331). That's all.

You can switch using sudo prime-select intel, sudo prime-select nvidia or using NVIDIA's control panel. You can also install an applet to quickly switch between your cards and it always shows you the card that you're currently using (Google for prime-indicator).

My performance using the NVIDIA driver from Ubuntu's repository was horrible. Every 5 seconds or so I had huge framedrops.

Now I'm using the xorg-edgers PPA and performance is much better. However, NVIDIA's control panel is broken in their packages, so you'll have to use one of the other methods to switch cards.

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