[SOLVED] NVIDIA Driver - Optimus Bumblebee - not able to load graphics driver

[humble wing]

Hi, I ran an archinstall script with free drivers to install a base system with kde6

I need to configure this laptop's graphics card (intel igpu & nvidia dgpu) (gtx 660m)

According to the archwiki for this series of gpu's I need to work with the nvidia-470xx drivers from the AUR, i went ahead and installed that, I also installed bumblebee
I also ran nvidia-xconfig after that
after that i rebooted the system, and it does not reach the greeter. I can easily connect to it via ssh from a laptop/pc in order to tinker/resolve this in the terminal

removing /etc/x11/xorg.conf fixed the no greeter issue

however, I still need to get the dGPU working

NVIDIA Driver - Optimus Bumblebee - not able to load graphics driver

➜ ~ sudo modprobe nvidia modprobe: FATAL: Module nvidia not found in directory /lib/modules/6.11.3-arch1-1

[humble wing]

All i need now is to have optimus/bumble do the switching

[drowsy shore]

i think you can do prime-run before a command to use discrete gpu

[humble wing]

Yea but I’d also like a general prime setting I can use on the dock, or also edit the property of an app launch to use prime run

So my gf wouldn’t have to type this in the cli all the time, especially since her R key is broken

[drowsy shore]

for desktop applications, you can edit the .destop file

for steam games, you can put prime-run %command% in the command line arguments

[humble wing]

Wait I’m stupid

But I can’t test it now, should I just add application profiles?

In the driver

For some stuff like chrome, etc?

Would that do it too?

This might be a really dumb question but I’m tired and not able to test it right now

[drowsy shore]

no i think thats for app-specific gpu settings

and not using the gpu to run app

[humble wing]

Youre probably right

[drowsy shore]

however i have an idea

what de do you use

or wm

[humble wing]

It’s just that when I was trying to install mint on this laptop I had the options to switch but I never fixed the actual driver loading, here it’s the inverse

[humble wing]

KDE

[drowsy shore]

there might be a plugin somewhere that pops an option when you right click apps

[humble wing]

Yes exactly

[drowsy shore]

but wait

[humble wing]

That’s all I need

Since commands seem to launch apps with the gpu

Nvidia-settings didn’t run without prime or optirun command

[drowsy shore]

for now you can just add prime-run to destkop entries

also, dw about bumblebee that thing is deprecated like a centry ago

and offers only 1/4 of the gpu performance

[humble wing]

Well this thing has a gtx 660M

Making the deprecated driver work was also a nightmare

It’s a muxless laptop with the dgpu obviously passing through the igpu

[drowsy shore]

wait so you are not on the latest driver?

[humble wing]

It just needs to be able to at least leverage the available gpu power

Oh no

Archwiki research points this family of cards to use nvidia-470xx-dkms

Took me a while to get those dkms sorted

They’re what, 13 years old

[humble wing]

Well that’s what I got on right now on the device afaik

[drowsy shore]

try the 470 driver

[humble wing]

That is the 470 driver

[drowsy shore]

i think that version is new enough to have prime-run

[humble wing]

I might be missing some stuff mentally rn, I spent 8 hours at this laptop earlier messing with mint and then just nuking it to just do arch like I’m used to

[humble wing]

That’s probably how I opened the nvidia settings from the picture

[drowsy shore]

then yeah you dont need bumblebee

also you should probably just go take a break. brain stops working after you do smt for too long

[humble wing]

Aight, but I do want a systemwide applet or smth that shows the option to use dgpu

I did

[drowsy shore]

theres probably one out there somewhere

[humble wing]

I haven’t touch the laptop for a few hours

[humble wing]

Well the arch wiki didn’t suggest anything so I’m not sure what to go for, I wish I knew what mint used because that was a handy little applet

And oh god it would literally make me real happy that in the end - arch was faster to install and configure

I spent over 16 hours with Debian and mint(I broke Debian via an update) and mint couldn’t get to load the drivers and in arch the gpu driver was hard, but I got there somehow and faster

In like 2 hours of active fiddling and 2 hours of just pacman doing pacman things

For an old device arch also boots 10 seconds faster on this ancient machine

[drowsy shore]

for now maybe just editing the desktop files would be the best

[humble wing]

Well, I’ll do some research with a fresh mind tomorrow, I’m certainly happy with the bits I did to make it work

I found an applet Optimus-manager

Will try it tomorrow

[humble wing]

[SOLVED] NVIDIA Driver - Optimus Bumblebee - not able to load graphics driver

wouldn't have epxect this much "fuckery" but damn, it works, optimus-manager is goated