Red Hat Is Working To Improve Linux Switchable Graphics

[Nostaris]

I think Ikey from the Solus project is also working on something like this?
https://plus.google.com/+Solus-Proje...ts/KszrCmRD1BN

[pal666]

I think it's more of a Red Hat "hey, those new shiny AMD drivers and Intel drivers...

article already mentions that he is nouveau developer and most of those laptops are using nvidia dpgu
did you even read it past title?

[starshipeleven]

I've never bothered about my integrated intel graphics but hope someday Vulkan will simply use it together with my GTX770 simultaneously.

Not gonna happen. In desktops integrated graphics is either primary (i.e. you connect video cable to its ports) or it is disabled.

What this project does could THEORETICALLY do that, by allowing you to use the integrated graphics as primary (so it stays online) and the dedicated GPU as 3D rendering only, like what happens in all modern laptops with switchable graphics.

[rubdos]

Not with my kids N series celeron laptop. Win8.1&win10 drivers paint black when there should be city view in Sims3. The kid has Debian partition and Sims3 works fine with wine-staging.

I perhaps have to rephrase that as "performance wise".

I know there was one N series that had a GPU that wasn't completely Intel (licensed) and was complete garbage under Linux. I know my school used them before and they thought "Intel only, what could go wrong?". Appeared that _everything_ could go wrong. Ubuntu needs 3D acceleration, and there only were drivers for a specific kernel and blablablah, wasn't fun apparently

[andre30correia]

the problem right now with intel/nvidia is Xorg devs, nvidia is only waiting for their patches being approved, the kernel work is done, the problem is X (always the same thing)

[Nille_kungen]

What problems is it that this will solve?
I use AMD powered laptop and i can't identify with the problem?
I can already use "DRI_PRIME=1 program".
Is the Intel/Nvidia combo really that bad? (i never use nvidia in laptops anymore since my nvidia laptops have always fried the graphics card)

[rubdos]

article already mentions that he is nouveau developer and most of those laptops are using nvidia dpgu
did you even read it past title?

I skimmed it. Sorry.

Reading this (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Chang...raphicsSupport) sounds like it will be vendor agnostic though. There are some mentions of nVidia, in the style of "Ensure the igpu is the default in the BIOs (Optimus enabled for laptops with nvidia gpus)", which, to me, reads like it's going to be vendor agnostic.

So, I was wrong. It's not a "Hey, look, AMD got new shiny drivers", it's more of "damnit, I wanna game on my Fedora, but bumblebee is a PITA".

Let's hope for good AMD AMDGPU support!

[haagch]

What problems is it that this will solve?
I use AMD powered laptop and i can't identify with the problem?
I can already use "DRI_PRIME=1 program".
Is the Intel/Nvidia combo really that bad? (i never use nvidia in laptops anymore since my nvidia laptops have always fried the graphics card)

Maybe they're going to make a GUI for all of that. Or just automagic configuration.
xrandr --setprovideroutputsource... Not everyone wants to open a terminal and put that into it every single time.

Or offloading with dri3. Is there any other GUI than the one that I hacked together here? https://github.com/ChristophHaag/gpuchooser

[daniel.blueman]

FWIW, with Ubuntu 16.04 on a Dell XPS 15 9550 with Nvidia GTX 960M, using 4.6 or newer kernels (http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/), the discete Nvidia GPU (managed by nouveau) is powered off with the right ACPI AML call when the device isn't opened by any application. This gives me ~8h battery with a 4K 15" screen. Nice!

[Espionage724]

Is the Intel/Nvidia combo really that bad? (i never use nvidia in laptops anymore since my nvidia laptops have always fried the graphics card)

Outside of Ubuntu, yes. On other distros, you basically either have to just know how to get it working, or figure it out on your own (I couldn't find any working noob-friendly guides), and it's not exactly straightforward either (in my case, I needed to disable nouveau, create a specific xorg.conf to load modesetting for the intel chip, tell NVIDIA driver to load without outputs connected, tell xinit to automatically do some sink provider xrandr thing on-boot, and manually add the new kernel module to initramfs).

With Ubuntu, I simply add the graphics PPA, install the driver, reboot, and Optimus works without issue, along with NVIDIA Prime. As much flak as Canonical/Ubuntu gets, they at least get hardware compatibility down pretty nicely Their GPU Manager software is pretty nifty (basically uses hardware conditions to generate a xorg.conf).

This is what I managed to put together after a few hours for instructions on openSUSE: https://wiki.realmofespionage.xyz/di...etary_graphics but those instructions alone don't give you any ability to switch GPUs, it acts a little strangely on suspend wake, and it doesn't automatically update the driver/rebuild kernel modules.

The above only applies to the proprietary NVIDIA driver though. With nouveau, DRI_PRIME works great. Really wish Maxwell had reclocking...

As for Bumblebee, from what I've seen, it performs slower than NVIDIA Prime. Much more convenient for switching GPUs though. I only care about performance, so I don't really need GPU switching

I think Ikey from the Solus project is also working on something like this?
https://plus.google.com/+Solus-Proje...ts/KszrCmRD1BN

Solus is quickly becoming my favorite distro that I can't use yet I'm waiting for 1.2.1 so I can do an encrypted install (could probably do it manually now, but meh)