Questions about Official EndeavourOS Nvidia Optimus WIKI and nvidia-installer

This is my first day using EndeavourOS. I have successfully follow official tutorial with little adaptation for installing Nvidia hybrid driver and I want to ask two questions:

  1. Why I need to install bumblebee(as in First Step) when in the end I use optimus-manager? Also the docs says bumblebee is conflictiing optimus-manager.

  2. nvidia-installer-dkms is installed by default in my case and as stated here. But why tutorial suggest using nvidia-installer -b to install bumblebee?

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Hello @Toni
This is a good question as i understand there is nvidia-installer and then there is the nvidia-installer-dkms. So one installs straight nvidia drivers and the other installs the dkms version. It is a little confusing and i don’t pretend to know everything about the hybrid graphics with bumblebee and optimus. I do however understand the difference between the nvidia and the nvidia-dkms especially on desktop cards which i have the GTX 1060. Not sure who wrote the wiki but i understand your question. I’m sure the wiki could be changed to make it more clear but I’m not the one to do that for sure. I can get myself into enough trouble just trying to figure some things out that i do know sort of! :rofl:

There are a lot of changes lately to the way nvidia-hybdrid was working and is now working, it could be that bumblebee is only working for older hybrid system (prior 1080 or may also all chips supported by latest nvidia driver) newer systems do not need bumblebee anymore cause there is render offload now.

We do still working on changing nvidia-installer to fit this changes.
Anyone have some knowledge or info on optimus-hybrid are welcome to share that so we develop the installer to fit the needs of you.

Also the WIKI entry should get a complete rewrite.

// moved this to community-contributions

What happen to original writer Wimmetje?

@wimmetje ?
My issue here is that i can not thest it a si do not own optimus hardware.
if you read this article from one of our german users:


There is no bumblebee install inside, but only tested on 10xx chips.
He only take nvidia drivers to be installed from initial install and then add optimus-manager to have it working.
2 Likes

Hi Guys,

I can’t remember why (technically) bumblebee needed to install first, but what i remembered is that i had black (boot) screens when i didn’t installed bumblee first. It had something to do with the display-manager that couldn’t load the nvidia driver properly.
But installing the bumblebee service togheter with the nvidia-installer worked, and disabling it afterwards when i got the optimus-manager running worked fine!

I used optimus-manager on a nvidia geforce 840M, but it also worked when i got a new notebook last year with a 1660ti built-in.

But this was before endeavouros got the nvidia boot option, i think that solved the display-manager problem by loading/installing the nvidia drivers right away (like it is your only graphics card).

I am going to try it out tomorrow, if it works on my 1660ti then maybe we can update the tutorials.

Regards Wim

4 Likes

Welcome @wimmetje
Long time…

Edit: Hope you’re doing okay!

2 Likes

Thank you @ricklinux

I am visiting this forum a lot, but posting was a bit off lately :wink:

Ontopic:
I tried a brand new install with the nvidia boot option (GTX1660ti), worked great nvidia drivers working perfect! After that i installed the optimus-manager but didn’t load the trayicon/switch. I discovered that you need to install the

optimus-manager-qt

to have the tray icon to switch from intel/nvidia.

Maybe we need to add that line to the guide.
But other then that this is working great!!!

Regards Wim

5 Likes

If I remember correctly, the parameter -b tells the installer to build the kernel modules correctly for bumblebee usage. Not adding that parameter will result in building the modules for a stand alone Nvidia GPU.

do you choose plasma as DE on install!
and you only install optimus-manager-qt no bumblebee involved?
And thanks for testing this!

I am sorry to not make my question clear. I know what -b does. I just don’t understand why it is not nvidia-installer-dkms -b instead?

Yes, installed this just like the guide, no bumblebee involded and XFCE as de.

The only thing is that you need the tray app (optimus-manger-qt) installed if you want to switch via the tray.

I really am curious of the older series nvidia graphics card will work, because in the past this method didnt work with my nvidia geforce 840M.

Regards Wim

1 Like

If someone here can check this (validating) ?
Would be possible to get some hint from journal on booting system with optimus-manger (not the qt version) installed:
journalctl -b -0 | curl -F 'f:1=<-' ix.io

After installation of the drivers check with:

pacman -Qs nvidia

Toni
Have you got things working , or are you still trying to resolve issue with Optimus .
I have a newer RTX 2070 working perfectly with Optimus .
If your still needing help to get it going , maybe I can help . Maybe it’s the same as my card to get going . Worth a try if still needing help ?

I have solved my problem, thanks.

Toni , congrats ! Nice to hear you have it working ! :smile:

I have an amd/nvidia hybrid laptop. This one is tricky but I was able to get a switch option working over on manjaro with the help of a person I have found on this forum. Currently the easiest way to get a working configuration on this laptop is to use prime render. When I get some time later this week, I will be working on getting the switch configuration working and testing it out. I have 2 xorg.conf’s that work to get the prime render offload working.

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier "layout"
    Option "AllowNVIDIAGPUScreens"
EndSection

Section "OutputClass"
    Identifier "AMDgpu"
    MatchDriver "amdgpu"
    Driver "amdgpu"
EndSection

Section "OutputClass"
    Identifier "nvidia"
    MatchDriver "nvidia-drm"
    Driver "nvidia"
    Option "AllowEmptyInitialConfiguration"
    ModulePath "/usr/lib/nvidia/xorg"
    ModulePath "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
EndSection
Section "ServerLayout"
	Identifier "layout"
	Option "AllowNVIDIAGPUScreens"
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier "AMDGPU"
	Driver "amdgpu"
	Option "TearFree" "true"
EndSection

Section "OutputClass"
	Identifier "iGPU"
	MatchDriver "amdgpu"
	Driver "modesetting"
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier "nvidia"
	Driver "nvidia"
EndSection

Section "OutputClass"
	Identifier "nvidia"
	MatchDriver "nvidia-drm"
	Driver "nvidia"
	Option "AllowEmptyInitialConfiguration"
	ModulePath "/usr/lib/nvidia/xorg"
	ModulePath "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
EndSection

These are only for amd/nvidia optimus laptops. I cannot speak for intel/nvidia because I have never used them. I have only tested the first one of the 2 I have posted, I will also work on testing the other one later this week.

2 Likes

I have a related question.

I have nvidia optimus manager installed successfully on a hybrid laptop - set to hybrid mode.

The question is:

It seems that only the intel video is ever active.
Under what situations do i use the dedicated gpu, and how would it be activated?

Not sure what desktop and how you have it setup to enable hybrid mode but this info here shows options under usage section at the bottom of the page.