I have just purchased a Acer 3830TG, the timeline X series.
To my surprise I found out that there is no first-party support for nvidia optimus for linux. Bumblebee works great, but the battery life from the graphics card always running is not so great.
I don't use linux for games so i don't really need the graphics card on, I have Windows for that.
In my bios, I have the ability to change my graphics mode from switchable to integrated.
If I do this, reinstall ubuntu, what will happen? Will my nvidia card just turn off? Will everything work properly, as if i'm not running an optimus laptop? Is this recommended as opposed to dealing with bumblebee?
What is the best thing I could do?
Best Answer
If you're looking for saving power, that's the recommended method: changing the BIOS setting to Integrated. It'll indeed turn the nVidia card off and rely on the Intel iGPU only. There is no need for reinstalling everything.
It'll also mean that you'll have to turn it on each time you want into Windows to play games. Not ideal.
Bumblebee supports power management scripts (although the use of it is considered experimental!). Do not use it unless you know what you're doing. https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/Bumblebee/wiki/ACPI-Removed In the future (1-3 months?), the Bumblebee team has probably a stable kernel module which should allow to toggle the nVidia card.