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Optimus-Manager for Nvidia

[for nvidia-latest driver and newer systems supported by that driver]

The state of optimus-manager

If you have a newer Nvidia-Intel hybrid Notebook, or also AMD-Nvidia combination:

You can simply switch the intel and NVidia GPU with optimus-manager tool.

For this you will need the proprietary NVidia driver installed.

Boot LiveISO and install EndeavourOS with optimus device.

—> go to step 4. if you already installed system and Nvidia Drivers:

  1. Boot on the NVidia boot option
  2. Install system of your choice (NVidia drivers will be installed automatically)
  3. Boot into your newly installed system
  4. install optimus-manager:

yay -S optimus-manager

Install optimus-manager-qt what is working on top of optimus-manager to get a tray icon to switch:

yay -S optimus-manager-qt

If you have a combo if AMD and Nvidia, you need currently the git version to support AMD GPU’s:

yay -S optimus-manager-qt-git

And if you want to use it under KDE/Plasma it is recommended to build with _plasma=true to set inside the PKGBUILD:

https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/tree/PKGBUILD?h=optimus-manager-qt-git

That makes it needed to build manually with makepkg or have an AUR-Helper that can handle editing PKGBUILD before building.

If choosing to manually build:

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/optimus-manager-qt-git
then open the folder optimus-manager-qt-git with filebrowser open the file PKGBUILD with Texteditor and change false to true here:

# Use KDE API features (recommended for Plasma users)

_with_plasma=true

save the file.
open a terminal inside the same folder (optimus-manager-qt-git) and run makepkg:
makepkg -si

This is the manual way to build and install packages from AUR.

  1. reboot system
  2. check optimus manager service (should be running)

systemctl status optimus-manager

To start and enable it run (if it is not running):

sudo systemctl enable --now optimus-manager

  1. Now switch to Nvidia GPU, right-click on the Tray and select “Switch to Nvidia“

On KDE/Plasma it will look like this:

8. You can switch manually with commands also:

You can also use it without tray icon:

Run from terminal:

optimus-manager --switch nvidia
to switch to the Nvidia GPU
optimus-manager --switch integrated
to switch to the integrated GPU and power the Nvidia GPU off
optimus-manager --switch hybrid
to switch to the iGPU but leave the Nvidia GPU available for on-demand offloading, similar to how Optimus works on Windows.

See the Wiki 1 at the source of it at GitHub for more details.

Warning:

  • be careful with the packages “acpi_call” and “bbswitch“.
    they will make the system unstable or it will not boot anymore.
  • optimus-manager will only work on Xorg (X11) session not on Wayland.
  • If you are running Gnome with GDM you need to install gdm-prime.

For more information read at the source for optimus-manager:

https://github.com/Askannz/optimus-manager

https://github.com/Shatur95/optimus-manager-qt

All Nvidia entries: https://discovery.endeavouros.com/?s=nvidia

Optimus-Manager for Nvidia

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