Bumblebee - support NVIDIA Optimus technology on Linux Mint 16-17.2

Nvidia prime

Bumblebee aims to provide support for NVIDIA Optimus laptops for GNU/Linux distributions. Such feature involves two graphics cards with two different power consumption profiles plugged in a layered way sharing a single framebuffer. Using Bumblebee, you can use your NVIDIA card for rendering graphics which will be displayed using the Intel card.

The Bumblebee server disables the discrete video card if no client is detected (if power management is enabled which is the default setting). This is done by keeping track of programs that request Bumblebee to run themselves on the discrete nvidia card. On such requests, a X server is started which makes use of the nvidia card. Because the frames cannot directly be displayed on the display due to the Optimus design, VirtualGL is used to copy frames to the visible display which runs on the integrated Intel GPU. 

Previously I wrote how to install Nvidia-Prime in Linux Mint. Now i describe how to put a different utility to run a discrete graphics card. The plus is that You activate the video card when running heavy video programs when you want.

Installation into Linux Mint 16/17/17.1/17.2/17.3:

1. How to detect and install the correct version of the Nvidia driver

1. Install directly Bumblebee

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bumblebee/stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install bumblebee bumblebee-nvidia linux-headers-generic

2. Install Primus

32-bit

sudo apt-get install primus

64-bit

sudo apt-get install primus primus-libs-ia32

3. To install the latest drivers for your video card read article How to detect and install the correct version of the Nvidia driver

4. Now open the configuration file /etc/bumblebee/bumblebee.conf

sudo gedit /etc/bumblebee/bumblebee.conf

Bumblebee - support NVIDIA Optimus technology on Linux Mint 16/17

Edit the file based on the name of your driver. On the screenshot I pointed out his version of "nvidia-340". Also find string "Driver=" and replace "Driver=nvidia" 

5. If you want to use bumblebee with graphics, use bumblebee indicator, install it with these commands:

sudo apt-get install git
sudo apt-get install python-appindicator
mkdir git
cd git
git clone https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/bumblebee-ui
cd bumblebee-ui
sudo ./INSTALL

6. Reboot system

How to run programms? "Use primurun on 64bit system, to run 32bit app through optirun"

primusrun firefox

or 

steam primusrun steam://rungameid/380

Bumblebee - support NVIDIA Optimus technology on Linux Mint 16/17

optirun glxspheres
optirun --status

[ERROR]The Bumblebee daemon has not been started yet or the socket path /var/run/bumblebee.socket was incorrect.
[ERROR]Could not connect to bumblebee daemon - is it running?

sudo apt-get purge bbswitch-dkms bumblebee-nvidia
sudo apt-get install bbswitch-dkms bumblebee-nvidia virtualgl primus virtualgl-libs-ia32

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic
sudo dkms autoinstall -k `uname -r`
sudo restart bumblebeed

Good Luck!!!

http://bumblebee-project.org/