Poor TTY resolution with nVidia driver

I finally managed to get everything working fine. Not quite sure exactly how, but it could be related to more recent nvidia drivers.

All of my tty are now working as expected. Sharing my configuration here in case it helps someone.

I followed the wiki documentation on bumblebee

So I used bumblebee and bbswitch

Package versions I'm using right now (latest):

$ sudo aura -Q | grep nvidia 
lib32-nvidia-libgl 375.26-2
lib32-nvidia-utils 375.26-2
nvidia-dkms 375.26-1
nvidia-settings 375.26-1
nvidia-utils 375.26-2

$ sudo aura -Q | grep bumblebee
bumblebee 3.2.1-12

$ sudo aura -Q | grep bbswitch 
bbswitch-dkms 0.8-55

Note that only having these installed, I was able to see my tty, but I wasn't able to startx anymore.

I was getting the following error:

[  2557.515] (EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the GLX module; please check in your X
[  2557.515] (EE) NVIDIA(0):     log file that the GLX module has been loaded in your X
[  2557.515] (EE) NVIDIA(0):     server, and that the module is the NVIDIA GLX module.  If
[  2557.515] (EE) NVIDIA(0):     you continue to encounter problems, Please try
[  2557.515] (EE) NVIDIA(0):     reinstalling the NVIDIA driver.
[  2557.681] (--) NVIDIA(0): Valid display device(s) on GPU-0 at PCI:1:0:0

After doing many attempts, I realized I had to delete /etc/X11/xorg.conf. After doing so, I was able to run startx.

For everything else, I followed the bumblebee wiki.

For reference, here's my /etc/default/grub:

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_TIMEOUT=10
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR="Arch"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nomodeset"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""

# Preload both GPT and MBR modules so that they are not missed
GRUB_PRELOAD_MODULES="part_gpt part_msdos"

# Uncomment to enable Hidden Menu, and optionally hide the timeout count
#GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=5
#GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=true

# Uncomment to use basic console
GRUB_TERMINAL_INPUT=console

# Uncomment to disable graphical terminal
GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT=console

# The resolution used on graphical terminal
# note that you can use only modes which your graphic card supports via VBE
# you can see them in real GRUB with the command `vbeinfo'
GRUB_GFXMODE=1920x1080x32

# Uncomment to allow the kernel use the same resolution used by grub
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keep

# Uncomment if you want GRUB to pass to the Linux kernel the old parameter 
# format "root=/dev/xxx" instead of "root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/xxx" 
#GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=true

# Uncomment to disable generation of recovery mode menu entries
#GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY=true

# Uncomment and set to the desired menu colors.  Used by normal and wallpaper 
# modes only.  Entries specified as foreground/background.
#GRUB_COLOR_NORMAL="light-blue/black"
#GRUB_COLOR_HIGHLIGHT="light-cyan/blue"

# Uncomment one of them for the gfx desired, a image background or a gfxtheme
#GRUB_BACKGROUND="/path/to/wallpaper"
#GRUB_THEME="/path/to/gfxtheme"

# Uncomment to get a beep at GRUB start
#GRUB_INIT_TUNE="480 440 1"

#GRUB_SAVEDEFAULT="true"

I think important line is GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nomodeset".

I've been running with a very low framerate, right click context menu were taking forever to open (1s or 2s, was so damn long...). Everything seems to run very smoothly now. Dismissing the context menu is still a bit long, but everything is way faster than before, I suppose my nvidia driver settings were bad or something like that.

I also enabled both cards "hybrid graphics" in my bios settings.

Edit 1: multi display not working for nvidia card right now, I tried a few things and now other TTYs are only a _ blinking and nothing in the logs in /var/log/Xorg* :(

Edit 2: background terminals do work when I boot in recovery mode (From Advanced menu in grub)

fbset allows you to change console resolution on the fly. However, it requires root permissions. You can use it like this:
fbset -xres 1920 -yres 900
Be aware that not all random modes are supported. It applies individually for each tty. When used in a VirtualBox virtual machine, its window automatically changes its size. But on my real hardware (native resolution was set by kms), after lowering resolution, image was sticked to upper left corner and changed "active" area keeping font size the same.
Midnight Commander (mc) is a good candidate for checking results: it takes all available space, so you can see which zone is currently "active".

Be careful when lowering resolution. For example, you are at 800x600, then you run fbset -xres 1280 (works fine, becomes 1280x600), then you run fbset -xres 1270 and it just screws your video. However, using fbset -xres 1270 when you are at 800x600 works fine).

Changing resolution worked when using a VirtualBox vm with efi firmware. But if you use it with legacy bios mode, you will get ioctl FBIOPUT_VSCREENINFO: invalid argument.