Arch Linux

Commander

Member

Registered: 2011-02-12

Posts: 43

nvidia-prime (from Ubuntu) for Arch?

Hi sorry if this is the wrong section (I'm a bit unsure where this should go).

So a quick tldr;
nvidia-prime switches between Intel/Nvidia. User selects correct vendor and reboots X (login/logout) and bam you are now running on Nvidia or Intel gpu.
Ubuntu got this working quite good, and somehow even in the Nvidia drivers.
http://s3.postimg.org/3y0lnqqlv/nvidia_prime.jpg

So I have found that allot of people are asking for this including myself.

I have looked at it and it seems that someone did a PKGBUILD: https://gist.github.com/Brainiarc7/03c188cb045253ff7caf

However since the pkg is Ubuntu specific it does not work. Things like dpkg is used for architecture check and so is gpu-manager that is contained in https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ub … ers-common
Looking at GPU manager it just writes the Xorg.conf file and the switching should work according to: https://vxlabs.com/tag/gpu-manager/ without it AFAIK.

So far if i'm not wrong here we need a pkg that contains;
* a script to switch Xorg.conf files for nvidia/intel. should not be hard to do.
* a script to switch with nvidia-libgl and mesa-libgl if im correct symlinks should do it?
* and ofc mesa-libgl so it wont conflict with the nvidia one.

Though would not allot be solved with the new libglvnd?
Any ideas how it ended up in nvidia-settings, do they detect ubuntu and nvidia-prime pkg and just enables that?

Looking at prime-select (the python script that switches) This should be it that sets the correct path? So they just update a symlink and run ldconfig?
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-prime/0.8.2

 self._command = '/usr/bin/update-alternatives'
 self._master_link = master_link
[...]
    def set_alternative(self, path):
        '''Tries to set an alternative and returns the boolean exit status'''
        try:
            subprocess.check_call([self._command, '--set',
                                   self._master_link, path])
            self.ldconfig()
        except CalledProcessError:
            return False
        return True

    def ldconfig(self):
        '''Call ldconfig'''
        try:
            subprocess.check_call(['/sbin/ldconfig'])
        except CalledProcessError:
            return False
        return True

Mod note: Converted img to url. Please see the forum etiquette regarding acceptable image sizes. -- WorMzy

Last edited by Commander (2016-03-27 22:25:06)

Awebb

Member

Registered: 2010-05-06

Posts: 6,286

Re: nvidia-prime (from Ubuntu) for Arch?

Is this for Optimus setups? If so, you might want to read the Optimus and Bumblebee wiki entries. I find this more comfortable and versatile.

Commander

Member

Registered: 2011-02-12

Posts: 43

Re: nvidia-prime (from Ubuntu) for Arch?

Is this for Optimus setups? If so, you might want to read the Optimus and Bumblebee wiki entries. I find this more comfortable and versatile.

Yes, but it seems that nvidia-prime gets higher performance especially if you got cpu bottleneck. (though got no numbers to prove that).

But I will try to get a quick and dirty setup running and see if this is really worth it.

x33a

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2009-08-15

Posts: 4,587

Re: nvidia-prime (from Ubuntu) for Arch?

Moving to "Creating and Modifying Packages".

dekece

Member

Registered: 2013-04-26

Posts: 14

Re: nvidia-prime (from Ubuntu) for Arch?

Was looking for something similar and apparently someone made it work on Fedora, might be easier than to work on the ubuntu version https://github.com/paltas/FedoraPrime

matthew_TKA

Member

From: Texas

Registered: 2016-06-02

Posts: 34

Website

Re: nvidia-prime (from Ubuntu) for Arch?

I ran into this post by searching for "nvidia-prime" after reading this article.

The wiki appears to be either out of date or somewhat inaccurate as it doesn't mention the nvidia-prime switching capability which seems to be provided by Nvidia and utilized on Ubuntu and Mint.

I have already tried Bumblebee on my MSI GS40 and when installing bbswitch X will not boot.  There is more info on a possible workaround here.

My laptop doesn't offer a BIOS setting to disable the Nvidia chip so that is a no go there.

Bumblebee supposedly defaults to Intel chip, but in my case the Nvidia chip is always on and hogging power.  I would much rather see the nvidia-prime solution working in arch at this point.

This is also being discussed here.

Edit: I have a temp solution for my situation that I describe on the first post of this thread.  Hopefully this will be resolved in future versions of bumblebee or possibly if Arch gets an nvidia-prime package.

Last edited by matthew_TKA (2016-06-12 23:46:50)

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