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I have a laptop with a discrete NVidia GeForce GTX 950M graphics card. I installed Ubuntu and am using the proprietary NVidia drivers (had to boot with nomodeset first to install those). That is, only NVidia proprietary drivers seem to work with this card, for now at least.

Now everything is working fine, but I would like to have the option to selectively use the NVidia GPU for graphics intensive tasks, otherwise have it off. Ideally without having to restart the session when switching cards. I've read that this is just what Bumblebee does.

I want to make sure I don't break my system. Has anyone tried Bumblebee with this card? Does it work fine?

What exactly do I need to install to get Bumblebee working?

I am on Ubuntu trusty, 14.04.

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  • I couldn't get it to work on Ubuntu, i have GF 740, it's not the top shelf one, but it just simply didnt want to work at all, I was fighting with it for over a week. I tried Ubuntu 14.x, 15.x and 16.x - all the same. Switching to Debian fixed everything for me (kernel 4.4.0.1 atm), but with the Jessie it was working good as well. In case, i would suggest You to make a backcup with acronis or do the system snap, because its gonna be painful fixing this stuff to come back to something stable :)
    – Eska
    Apr 6, 2016 at 11:39
  • @Eska What exactly didn't work for you? The drivers (Nvidia proprietary are working fine with me)? Bumblebee?
    – a06e
    Apr 6, 2016 at 11:42
  • At first drivers, i was just downgrading them, then login loop, couldn't log in, since i was fixing one issue, i was bumped to another like, no X will boot at all at some point, when i finally made it stable, optirun wasn't running as it suposed to be, or the apps we're still running on integrated intel gpu. Screen schuttering, screen freezes, gnome windows were glitchy, well.. there were quite a few issues. Weird was, when i installed Debian Jessie - everything started to running smooth from single sudo apt-get install, same with the Debian Stretch.. I really dont understand why.
    – Eska
    Apr 6, 2016 at 11:45
  • I have the same card, and it installs fine, but it doesn't work. You can add applications, but once they're added, they become non-selectable, with an "unknown" name and icon. You can try it, but I don't think you'll have any luck.
    – TheWanderer
    Apr 6, 2016 at 11:54
  • @Zacharee1 Add applications where? I've never actully used Bumblebee. You mean that optirun won't work?
    – a06e
    Apr 6, 2016 at 11:59

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Yes, Bumblebee should work fine with your card (Bumblebee supports whatever Nvidia or nouveau do). Do not hesitate to seek for help on the bugtracker. They are some known issues, but most of them should be fixed in the coming release (for which a pre-version is available through our testing PPA. You might potentially also have some issues with bbswitch (the power management part of it), but those should be solved soon with the coming 1.0 release.

@Zacharee1: You’ve probably tried to use bumblebee-ui, which is so deprecated that we even deleted the repo to prevent other people trying to use it. The only way to use Bumblebee is through optirun, there is no “add apps to anything” thing. You might eventually edit your .desktop files or create alias in your .bashrc (or .whatevershellrc) to add optirun at the beginning of the appropriate commands. Regarding video games, both Steam and PlayOnLinux allow you to set this easily.

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