My laptop uses Nvidia Optimus for video. This means the GPU built in to the CPU is for for 2D, and the Nvidia adapter is used for 3D. The idea I'm assuming is to save power. Great, who doesn't want their laptop battery to last longer?
In Linux land though, Optimus is problematic. The proprietary Nvidia drivers don't support it (licensing issues are getting in the way unfortunately). Given that's the case, I've been sticking to Nouveau, the open source driver for Nvidia cards that comes stock with Fedora. I haven't been able to play any 3d games on my laptop because of this, but do I have a Windows machine sitting around somewheres if I really need to scratch that itch.
Fedora 24 and Nouveau drivers turned out to be a whole different ball game however. After installing F24, I noticed my laptop was running really really hot. Lm sensors, a hardware monitoring tool for Linux, told me my idle CPUs were sitting at a little under 70 degrees Celsius. Yikes! Not good.
Bumblebee to the rescue! Bumblebee is an open source Linux project that lets you switch between the integrated GPU and the Nvidia adapter. With Bumblebee, by default graphics are handled by the integrated chip. You can manually run applications with the "optirun" or the "primusrun" commands though and then graphics will be handled by the more powerful Nvidia chip. Bumblebee supports the proprietary Nvidia drivers as well, so 3d games are not a problem.
So why have I been sticking with Nouveau? Well, setting up Bumblebee in the past has been a bit involved and didn't always turn out well. But it seems some Fedora folks have been busy making it all very simple. Following this guide I had Bumblebee installed and working in a matter of minutes. A quick reboot, and my CPU temperatures went down to under 50 degrees Celsius. So sure, things started out a bit rocky with Optimus, but give it time and the open source community does not disappoint. Looks like I will not be running Nouveau drivers again any time soon.
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