Do I need Bumblebee on my laptop?

Question

I'm kinda a new user of Ubuntu and I have a Laptop that I just dualbooted Ubuntu. I was wondering if I'd need to install any kind of software for my Nvidia graphics card. I read about this Bumblebee but I'm not quite sure how it works. I'm not using my laptop for gaming recently, just for studies, so the only reason for me to be looking at this is because I want the best of my battery. Thanks! :)

Answer 1

This should cover any Bumblebee / optiumus questions you have, but for more information you can see the wiki https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bumblebee

Installation

12.04

You need to open your terminal and enter the commands below.

If on 12.04.3, replace linux-headers-generic with linux-headers-generic-lts-raring

Enable the Universe and Multiverse repositories - you need to do this to allow the bumblebee and nvidia packages respectively to be installed.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bumblebee/stable
sudo apt-get update

Install Bumblebee using the default proprietary nvidia driver for 12.04 - 13.04 :

sudo apt-get install bumblebee bumblebee-nvidia virtualgl linux-headers-generic

Reboot

Basic Setup for 13.10 and later

You need to open your terminal and enter the commands below.

Enable the Universe and Multiverse repositories - you need to do this to allow the bumblebee and nvidia packages respectively to be installed.

sudo apt-get install bumblebee bumblebee-nvidia primus linux-headers-generic

Reboot

Advanced Setups

For advanced users, if you do not want to use the proprietary nvidia driver or 32-bit libraries (for example, if you are only interested in power savings), you can do your custom installation.

Minimal setup : sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends bumblebee

Depending on your needs, add to this line:

bumblebee-nvidia: proprietary nvidia driver support (if installed, become default over nouveau)

virtualgl: VirtualGL as backend

virtualgl-libs-ia32: 32bit support for VirtualGL on 64bit system, necessary to run 32bit app through optirun

primus: primus/primusrun as backend (virtualgl Stays default, you need to run optirun -b primus )

primus-libs-ia32: 32bit support for primus/primurun on 64bit system, necessary to run 32bit app through optirun

Usage

To run your application with the discrete NVIDIA card run in the terminal:

 optirun [options] <application> [application-parameters] 

Example:

optirun firefox

For a list of options for optirun run:

 optirun --help 

Normally you do not use optirun for your window manager, installations or other non graphic heavy demanding programs. The optirun command is mainly used for graphic demanding programs or for games.

Power Management

A primary goal of this project is to not only enable use of the discrete GPU for rendering, but also to enable smart power management of the dGPU when it's not in use. We're using either bbswitch (a module) or vga_switcheroo (kernel module, experimental) to do this in Bumblebee.

Since Bumblebee 3.0, this feature is enabled by default, using bbswitch. This allow automatic power management, without any configuration needs.

If Power Management doesn't work on your laptop, please go to this Power Management (PM) page and help to improve Bumblebee.