Arch Linux

PerePapouilles

Member

Registered: 2023-03-20

Posts: 2

How to manage optimus and avanced optimus nvidia on wayland ?

Since 1 month, I run arch linux (not without a hitch) on my laptop.
I use the WAYLAND protocol for the graphic display.
This PC is optimus and avanced optimus compatible by nvidia.
However, I don't know how to manage my different graphic cards (iGPU and GPU).
I use TLP for power management but it doesn't work miracles.
Would you have any advice to better manage the use of one or two of them under WAYLAND?

I have read:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA_Optimus
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Razer_Blade
and I did some research on the internet.
But does'nt work

I'm also interested in any other tips that might concern my laptop.
Have a nice day

Last edited by PerePapouilles (2023-03-20 14:21:16)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,888

Re: How to manage optimus and avanced optimus nvidia on wayland ?

You do not need to do anything special in most normal cases here (enable modesetting and install nvidia-prime and run applications with the prime-run wrapper mostly), how well this is integrated and works depends on your compositor, what are you using here?

Last edited by V1del (2023-03-20 14:36:47)

PerePapouilles

Member

Registered: 2023-03-20

Posts: 2

Re: How to manage optimus and avanced optimus nvidia on wayland ?

Thank you for your reply

I use sway and hyprland.
Using nvtop to see my GPU usage, it still uses some of the nvidia GPU memory and I want it not to use it at all. I looked in the bios, no way to disable the nvidia card.
I have tried the udev rules but it still shows me using the card.
I also blacklisted the nvidia drivers, it uses "NOUVEAU".

ladar=

Member

Registered: 2021-11-24

Posts: 2

Re: How to manage optimus and avanced optimus nvidia on wayland ?

If you want to disable the NVIDIA card completely, you need to remove/blacklist the f/oss nouveau driver and remove/uninstall the NVIDA drivers.

Obviously when the NVIDIA drivers aren't installed, the system falls back to using the nouveau drivers. My guess is the reason your udev blacklist rule isn't being applied is because the nouveau module is part of the compressed kernel image. It's there so people with only NVIDIA GPUs can still boot there system. But it also means nouveau is being loaded before the udev rules get applied.

To disable it you either need to add "rd.driver.blacklist=nouveau modprobe.blacklist=nouveau" to your kernel boot command, OR, remove the module from your kernel image. If you do the latter, then you can use a udev rule to stop it from loading.