Intel/Nvidia Laptop instalation, help needed!

23 March 2022, 17:35:21

Hi, everybody.

I'd like to ask some kind soul to help me install nvidia drivers for artix runit plasma edition.
I have been trying to switch from windows to linux for a month now, and I tried it with this edition of artix, but I simply do not know what to install anymore.
I tried nvidia drivers, nvidia dkms, different linux firmwares, optimus managers, prime softwares but every time I would break something, and I would end up with reinstalling artix from scratch only to mess it up again.
I need a step by step procedure of installing this this so that I can switch between nvidia and intel and hybrid mode.

My laptop is hp pavilion intel i5-11300h
intel iris xe/ nvidia rtx3050

If there is any other info that is needed, let me know.

Thank you in advance!!

Re: Intel/Nvidia Laptop instalation, help needed!

Reply #1 – 23 March 2022, 21:46:04

I have a rather old laptop with Intel core i3 5005 and Nvidia GT 920, and I usually use the bumblebee setup in various linux installations with it. Optimus manager stuff from Artix repos never worked for me for whatever reason, so I gave up to configure it properly.

You will need the xf86-video-intel package for the intel video drivers. For Nvidia, if you use the linux kernel, the nvidia package would go for you. With any other kernel, install the nvidia-dkms package, this is the universal one and it fits any kernel (but you must install the appropriate kernel headers in order to make it working). I myself use the linux-lts kernel and I recommend it for you.

Those are the drivers. Then, you need to install the bumblebee package, add the bumblebeed daemon to autostart using your init system of choice, and add your user to the bumblebee group. I also strongly recommend installing the bbswitch-dkms package: this module will switch off your discrete GPU while it is not in use, so it won't be consuming energy and heating your laptop in vain.

I also use this xorg configuration for my videocards:

Code: (/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf) [Select]

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "Intel Graphics"
    Driver      "intel"
    Option      "AccelMethod"  "sna"
    Option      "TearFree"	"True"
    Option      "Tiling"	"True"
    Option      "SwapbuffersWait" "True"
    BusID       "PCI:0:2:0"    # <--- change this!
    Option	"ReprobeOutputs" "true"
EndSection

Code: (/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/30-nvidia.conf) [Select]

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "NVidia Card"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    BusID          "PCI:8:0:0"   # <--- change this!
EndSection

Change the BusID option according to your actual bus IDs which you can obtain by running lspci.

With this setup, your default videocard will be intel. When you need to run something with the nvidia one, just run in the terminal:

Code: [Select]

primusrun <command>

or:

Code: [Select]

optirun -b primus <command>

(I prefer primusrun over plain optirun; the above two commands do theoretically the same thing, but the latter one works better with wine).
EDIT: well, you need to install the primus package in order to have the primusrun command.

With this setup, everything works fine for me in Artix.

Read more about bumblebee here (there is also an example on how to run nvidia-settings with bumblebee):
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/bumblebee#General_usage