Ubuntu / Linux news and application reviews.

Prime Indicator Plus Makes It Easy To Switch Between Nvidia And Intel Graphics (Nvidia Optimus)

| Date: October 21, 2016 | View Comments | Tags: appindicator, customization, linux, nvidia, nvidia-prime, optimus, ubuntu

Prime Indicator is an AppIndicator for laptops with Nvidia Optimus, allowing users to quickly switch between Intel and Nvidia graphics.

Prime Indicator Plus

The original Prime Indicator hasn't been updated since February, 2015. André Brait forked the indicator (while also using code from the Linux Mint version), improving it with both new functionality and bug fixes, and the new app is called Prime Indicator Plus.

How To Install And Configure Bumblebee In Ubuntu 16.04 Or 16.10 (With Nvidia-361 Or Nvidia-370 And Newer)

| Date: August 30, 2016 | View Comments | Tags: bumblebee, customization, nvidia, ubuntu

Bumblebee logo


The Bumblebee package available in the official Ubuntu 16.04 repositories needs a tweak to work with Nvidia 361 graphics drivers. Furthermore, if you want to use a newer Nvidia graphics drivers version, such as 370 (which is currently in beta), the discrete card is not turned off, resulting in it being used all the time, and not just when running apps or games with "optirun", as it should.

So here's how to properly install and configure Bumblebee in Ubuntu 16.04, to get it to work with nvidia-361 and nvidia-370 (the latter from the Graphics Drivers PPA).

 The instructions below should also work with Linux Mint 18.x, but I didn't test this in Linux Mint!

 Update: the Nvidia Graphics Drivers PPA now also provides Nvidia 375 and 378 drivers. The instructions below work with these as well, but make sure to replace any instance o "nvidia-370" with the version from the PPA you use, in the instructions below!

 Update 2: the instructions below now also include Ubuntu 16.10.

How To Install The Latest Nvidia Drivers In Ubuntu or Linux Mint Via PPA

| Date: June 24, 2016 | View Comments | Tags: customization, drivers, linux, nvidia, ubuntu

Upgrading to the latest version of the proprietary Nvidia drivers in Ubuntu (or Linux Mint) was pretty complicated a while back. You would either have to use the official Linux installer, which was not always reliable, at least for me, or use a bleeding edge PPA, like the Xorg Edgers PPA, which would upgrade multiple packages, most of which were unstable.

That's no longer the case thanks to the Proprietary GPU Drivers PPA, which offers stable proprietary Nvidia graphics driver updates, without updating other libraries to unstable versions (some libraries may still be updated using this PPA, if they are needed by the drivers, but there's nothing unstable in the PPA).

New Official Proprietary GPU Drivers Ubuntu PPA Released

| Date: August 13, 2015 | View Comments | Tags: customization, games, graphics drivers, linux, nvidia, ppa, ubuntu

nvidia

In an effort to make it easier to install the latest proprietary graphics drivers in Ubuntu, a new official PPA was released today.

Recent Update Broke Ubuntu Desktop On Some Nvidia Optimus Laptops [Fix]

| Date: September 08, 2014 | View Comments | Tags: fix, nvidia, optimus, ubuntu

Nvidia Optimus Ubuntu

According to a bug report, a recent Ubuntu 14.04 update broke the desktop for some Nvidia Optimus users:

"Until yesterday the 14.04 install on this Thinkpad T530 (nvidia Optimus) with nvidia-331 drivers worked just fine, including excellent multi-monitor behavior. Yesterday the set of packages below [1] was updated. I shut down, booted this morning and found out that I was not shown the lightdm login screen: I was stuck at the purple screen that precedes it (into which I enter my disk encryption password)".

- lp #1365695 bug

Prime Indicator Lets You Quickly Switch Between Nvidia And Intel Graphics

| Date: January 10, 2014 | View Comments | Tags: appindicator, graphics, linux, nvidia, nvidia-prime, optimus, ubuntu

Prime Indicator is a small, helpful Ubuntu AppIndicator for Nvidia Optimus users running Ubuntu 14.04 which allows users to quickly switch between Intel and Nvidia graphics cards.

Nvidia Prime Indicator

Update: Prime Indicator was abandoned, but it was later forked, and it now includes quite a few new features. The Ubuntu PPA installation instructions in this article now install the fork (called Prime Indicator Plus). For more about Prime Indicator Plus, see this article:



More Work To Support Nvidia Optimus Lands In Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr

| Date: December 10, 2013 | View Comments | Tags: graphics drivers, laptops, nvidia, nvidia-prime, optimus, Trusty Tahr, ubuntu

More work to properly support Nvidia Optimus landed in Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr.

Fix Bumblebee libturbojpeg.so Issue In Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy Salamander

| Date: October 16, 2013 | View Comments | Tags: bumblebee, fix, nvidia

In Ubuntu 13.10 (Saucy Salamander), it seems that the libturbojpeg .so filename has changed from libturbojpeg.so to libturbojpeg.so.0 and this breaks Bumblebee. Below you'll find a quick fix for this issue.

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