Bumblebee on Asus Zenbook UX303LB

Question

About a week ago, I bought a new laptop (Asus Zenbook UX303LB). I immediately threw out the included Windows installation and installed Ubuntu 15.04 (later upgraded to 15.10, and also reinstalled at some) to replace it. The system has been working just fine.

A couple days ago I noticed, that I didn't have proprietary Nvidia drivers installed. I installed them, and saw major tearing artifacts on the screen. I can switch the prime profile to Intel, but then the Nvidia graphics card can't be utilized at all.

I have tried installing Bumblebee to fix the afforementioned issues (and improve battery life when not using the NVidia card). The guide I followed can be found here. No matter what I tried (stuff mentioned in the comments of that question, and methods used in other articles), I always got the "The system is running in low-graphics mode" screen, and could only use the text-based ttys. I have then had to recover from a backup.

I have only tried installing Bumblebee alongside the nvidia-352-updates drivers so far. Are they problematic? Another issue I percieved, was that the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file was always overwritten to a format which seemed illogical (The only display in use was nvidia, but it was not defined and the intel display was set to be inactive).

So, is there any way I could install Bumblebee (or something similar, as long as it atleast takes care of the tearing) properly?

More info:

After attempting to install bumblebee using philsegeler's method (and using other methods as well), trying to proceed in the "The system is running in low-graphics mode" dialog and choosing "Try running with default graphical mode" results in this:

[...] [drm:intel_pipe_config_compare [i915]] *ERROR* mismatch in base.adjusted_mode.crtc_clock (expected 138780, found 92519)
[...] [drm:intel_pipe_config_compare [i915]] *ERROR* mismatch in base.adjusted_mode.crtc_clock (expected 138780, found 92519)
[...] [drm:intel_pipe_config_compare [i915]] *ERROR* mismatch in base.adjusted_mode.crtc_clock (expected 138780, found 92519)
[...] [drm:gen8_irq_handler [i915]] *ERROR* The master control interrupt lied (SDE)!

As I described earlier in the post, this is what the xorg.conf now looks like:

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier "layout"
    Screen 0 "nvidia"
    Inactive "intel"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier "intel"
    Driver "modesetting"
    BusID "PCI:0@0:2:0"
    Option "AccelMethod" "None"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "intel"
    Device "intel"
EndSection

Answer 1

1. Uninstall nvidia-prime:

   sudo apt-get remove --purge nvidia-prime
   

2. Install bumblebee and the nvidia driver

   sudo apt-get install bumblebee bumblebee-nvidia nvidia-352 nvidia-352-uvm nvidia-settings primus
   

3. Do sudo gedit /etc/modules and add

   i915
   
   bbswitch
   

4. Do sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/bumblebee.conf and make sure the line

   blacklist nvidia-352
   # is there, if not add it. This is most probably what caused you to boot into low-graphics mode
   

5. Do sudo gedit /etc/bumblebee/bumblebee.conf

   • line 22: >Driver=nvidia

   • line 55: >KernelDriver=nvidia-352

   • line 58: >LibraryPath=/usr/lib/nvidia-352:/usr/lib32/nvidia-352

   • line 61: >XorgModulePath=/usr/lib/nvidia-352/xorg,/usr/lib/xorg/modules

6. reboot.

Sources

1. http://rajat-osgyan.blogspot.gr/2015/05/how-to-install-latest-nvidia-driver-in.html

It is approved by many (and me)to work, though the difference is that I don't use ppa:xorg-edgers (since it is unstable) I recommend you do that instead.

Others

• Use primusrun %command% in steam launch options
• and primusrun programname for everything else you want to run on nvidia. This should eliminate tearing for you and make vsync work again!

Hardware: Samsung NP550P5C S02
CPU: Intel i5-3210M
GPU: Nvidia GT 650M

Answer 2

I had similar issues. I didn't notice that much screen tearing with Prime, but there was a problem which required me to reboot every time I wanted to switch GPU. However, after installing Bumblebee I would always get a black terminal at log-in, no matter which guides or posts I followed. I spent two weekends installing and unintalling various combinations of drivers and finally got it to work by installing both Prime and Bumblebee.

I'm using the nvidia-355 drivers from the graphics-drivers PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt-get update

---

First, I completely uninstalled my graphics drivers and reinstalled nouveau (I got these instructions from various parts on the internet and eventually put them together in a script because I was reinstalling stuff all the time):

# Remove everything to do with the Nvidia proprietary drivers.
sudo apt-get remove -y --purge nvidia* bumbleblee*

# Start from scratch.
sudo apt-get remove -y --purge xserver-xorg-video-nouveau

# Reinstall all the things!
sudo apt-get install -y nvidia-common
sudo apt-get install -y xserver-xorg-video-nouveau
sudo apt-get install -y --reinstall xserver-xorg-core

# Reconfigure the X server.
sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

# Remove leftover xorg.conf files
sudo rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf

---

Then, I followed these steps from this thread:

1. Install nvidia-355, nvidia-prime and nvidia settings.

   sudo apt-get install nvidia-355 nvidia-prime nvidia-settings
   

2. Select intel driver in nvidia panel and logout (or in my case: reboot).

   sudo prime-select intel
   

3. Install bumblebee only (not bumblebee-nvidia) and edit /etc/bumblebee/bumblebee.conf as per the instructions from the rajat guide.

   line 22 -> Driver=nvidia
   replace nvidia-current with nvidia-355 everywhere in the file (line 55, 58, 61)
   

4. Edit: /etc/bumblebee/xorg.conf.nvidia and uncomment BusID "PCI:01:00:0".

---

I have no idea why this would work while the other solutions wouldn't, but there you have it. I hope it works as well for you as it did for me.

For reference, here's my own post about the topic.

Edit -- One more thing. After all of this, I would get start-up issues caused by nouveau. I'd only be able to boot into the system by pressing e at the Grub screen and adding "nouveau.nomodeset=0" to the line that starts with "linux". I tried various solutions to make this change permanent, but in the end the only thing that worked was reinstalling nvidia-355, nvidia-settings and nvidia-prime again.

Answer 3

Replace bumblebee with nvidia-prime to switch between integrated and dedicated graphics.

Reinstall the NVIDIA drivers, but first uninstall all NVIDIA software and remove the bumblebee.

Open a terminal and execute:

sudo apt-get purge nvidia* bumblebee  
sudo reboot  

Install the stable NVIDIA drivers from the Ubuntu repositories (valid for Ubuntu 15.10 only ) :

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-352 nvidia-prime
sudo reboot

Answer 4

on my Asus UL30VT, with new Ubuntu / Mint, there is an init script called gpu-manager, which has no idea how to deal with hybrid graphics. It routinely tries to force nVidia on me, so I have found I need to disable it to succeed with Bumblebee. To do that, I simply commented out all the lines in /etc/init/gpu-manager.conf, so it looks like this:

#start on (starting lightdm
#          or starting mdm
#          or starting kdm
#          or starting xdm
#          or starting lxdm)
#task
#exec gpu-manager --log /var/log/gpu-manager.log

I also had to:

sudo rm /etc/init.d/xorg.conf

Then a reboot gave me a graphical login.