This is part of my series on installing Ubuntu 14.04 on my laptop. In the previous post, I worked through installing Virtualbox for VMs. In this post, I am working through installing the video drivers for optimal use of the video cards. My laptop has a hybrid graphics card, so I attempted to use Nvidia Prime. When that didn’t work, I dropped back to Bumblebee.
Just so you can see what I have, I looked in lspci. Here’s the Nvidia controller:
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GK107M [GeForce GT 650M] (rev a1)
Here’s the Intel controller:
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller (rev 09)
Here’s what I did…
Activating Nvidia Prime
First, I tried the Nvidia option in “Additional Drivers”. Additional Drivers is now in the Software & Updates program.
I was very surprised that it didn’t make me reboot, but I did it anyway. After applying this change, I could confirm that NVidia Prime was installed by opening the Nvidia Settings program. It has an option to switch between the two cards:
I was a little disappointed in that I couldn’t switch on the fly. I wants me to log out and back in, which means closing all my applications.
After installing this though, I started to notice the system freezing. I could unfreeze it by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F6. That would take me out to the command-line. Then, I could go back to GUI with Alt+F7. So far, it seems to be only when I am in NVIDIA (Performance Mode).
Prime Indicator
Next, I saw this indicator that makes switching back and forth very easy. So, I thought that I would give it a try. Here are the commands to install it:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8 sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install mesa-utils prime-indicator
After that, I had to log out and back in again to get the indicator to show up. When I hadn’t installed the mesa-utils package, it looked like this:
With mesa-utils, it displayed the current graphics card that was enabled.
The worst part about the whole thing is that it requires restarting the X Server, which means logging out and logging back in again. This kills any applications that you have running and aborts any Virtualbox machines that you have running.
Switch Issue
I ran into this issue with switching to the Nvidia processor. It’s almost exactly like this post on Ask Ubuntu.
To fix it, I reinstalled Nvidia Prime:
sudo apt-get purge libvdpau-va-gl1 bumblebee* nvidia* sudo apt-get install nvidia-331 nvidia-settings nvidia-prime
I restarted to make sure that it took effect. After that, I got back on the Nvidia driver.
Installing Bumblebee
Nvidia Prime is still not for me. I still get the screen freezes. I don’t like having to reboot or at least close everything and log back in. So, I uninstalled Prime and installed Bumblebee…
sudo apt-get purge libvdpau-va-gl1 bumblebee* nvidia* sudo apt-get install bumblebee bumblebee-nvidia primus nvidia-331
Then, I installed Bumblebee GUI:
sudo apt-get install python-appindicator sudo apt-get install git cd ~/Downloads/ mkdir bumblebee-gui-workdir cd bumblebee-gui-workdir git clone https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/bumblebee-ui.git cd bumblebee-ui sudo ./INSTALL
After that, I rebooted.
To make the indicator automatically start, I added bumblebee-indicator to the startup applications.
In addition, the icons had an issue. I manually copied them to the ~/.icons directory:
mkdir ~/.icons cp ~/Downloads/bumblebee-gui-workdir/bumblebee-ui/icons/* ~/.icons
After that it worked. It’s just that the performance was horrible. I’ll have to figure that out at some point. If you know how to fix it, please comment below.
Performance
So, I ran a test using glxgears (out of the mesa-utils package), and I get about 60 FPS on the Intel card:
On the Nvidia graphics card, I was getting around 9800 FPS:
Here’s the performance with Bumblebee. You’ll notice that with and without “optirun” in front that it is getting about 60 FPS:
Next Steps
If you are following along with my series, you can proceed to the next post about miscellaneous settings and utilities. Or, you can look at the list of install posts in the series.
Resources
- Ask Ubuntu: Getting hybrid graphics to work bumblebee nvidia-prime GT650M on Ubuntu 13.10 and 14.04
- WebUpd8: 10 THINGS TO DO AFTER INSTALLING UBUNTU 14.04 TRUSTY TAHR TO GET A NEAR PERFECT DESKTOP
- Ask Ubuntu: Nvidia-331 Nvidia-Settings Prime Profile Switching Error
- Ask Ubuntu: How to set up nVidia Optimus/Bumblebee in 14.04
- Ask Ubuntu: Bumblebee indicator icon on unity bar does not show up Ubuntu 13.04
- Ubuntu Forums: ubuntu 14.04 poor performance by bumblebee