For more information, join the team subscribe to the mailing list 
at the bottom of the Launchpad page

    http://launchpad.net/~hybrid-graphics-linux 

Please join this team if you are new by clicking on the "Join 
Team" link at the right of the Launchpad page. It's important to 
have as many users in the community as possible to request for 
appropriate support.

Friday 27 January 2012

Improved support for AMD hybrid graphics users

A team member recently reported that the HP Pavilion dv7 model with a Hybrid graphics AMD 6700M HD and Intel coniguration is now fully supported in Linux by the recently released AMD graphics driver version 12.1:

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/linux/Pages/radeon_linux.aspx

Hybrid graphics setup is now fully working, with switching from low power to high performance on demand and including suspend/resume support.

Friday 20 January 2012

Bumblebee version 3.0 "Tumbleweed" release

The Bumblebee Project proudly presents version 3.0 of Bumblebee, a project
aiming to support NVIDIA Optimus technology under Linux. After two months of
hard work this version has finally been considered stable enough for release.

If you thought that Bumblebee was dead, it's still alive and kicking! See
http://wiki.bumblebee-project.org/FAQ

The project has been fully rewritten in the C programming language, providing
increased performance and reliability, mostly thanks to a new developer in the
project, Jaron Viëtor (a.k.a. Thulinma). That bring the number of main developers to
4, the three other ones being Peter Wu (a.k.a. Lekensteyn), Joaquín Ignacio
Aramendía (a.k.a. Samsagax) and Bruno Pagani (a.k.a. ArchangeGabriel).

The most important new feature is automatic power management support. Yes, in
Bumblebee 3.0 "Tumbleweed", you've got Power Management working out of the box,
without any manual configuration needed. That's not the only one though, the
full changelog could be found at
http://bumblebee-project.org/release-notes-3.0

This rewrite of the project was an occasion for updating available
documentations, wikis and instructions that can be found on the web. However,
please be aware that we cannot update all sites that exist and that a lot
misinformation is still spread. The best way to be sure to have the latest
instructions is checking our wiki at
http://wiki.bumblebee-project.org or follow us at
Twitter http://bumblebee-project.org/twitter,
Facebook http://bumblebee-project.org/facebook or
Google Plus http://bumblebee-project.org/g+.

Currently, packages for ArchLinux, Ubuntu and Mandriva have been packaged.
Below are installation instructions for some distributions:
Arch Linux:https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Bumblebee
Ubuntu:https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bumblebee
Debian: https://wiki.debian.org/Bumblebee
Mandriva: There's a bumblebee package in their repositories.
Other distributions can find more generic installation instructions at
http://wiki.bumblebee-project.org/Install-and-usage

We currently do not accept donations. The Paypal account referred by the
tinyurl "Bumblebee Project" belongs to Martin Juhl (MrMEEE), former
developer of Bumblebee and his own fork, Ironhide.

The team is looking for users having the necessary knowledge to build packages
for other popular distributions, if you're interested please join
#bumblebee-dev on Freenode. We'll then link our documentation to the one from
your distribution.

Now that Bumblebee 3.0 has been released, we will continue improving it.
Therefore we seek developers experienced in building Compositing Window
Managers, a goal we want to achieve for version (far).(away).

If you run into problems, be sure to read
http://wiki.bumblebee-project.org/Troubleshooting.
Although we aim at stability, (compatibility) issues may still occur which can
be reported by following the instructions on
http://wiki.bumblebee-project.org/Reporting-Issues.

The Bumblebee Project Team.

Thursday 19 January 2012

New bumblebee version nearing release

The Bumblebee developers team has been working on several improvements into a new version of bumblebee that will be released soon. Among the new features to be expected is the safe and seamless integration of discrete Nvidia card on/off switching with optirun calls to specific programs.

For more, follow http://twitter.com/Team_Bumblebee

Sunday 15 January 2012

Support for mode nvidia/intel models in bbswitch

Support for models that have the nvidia DSM method on the integrated Intel video card instead of the nvidia one. This includes at the Acer Travelmate 8472TG and Acer Aspire 5745G.

http://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/bbswitch/blob/master/NEWS

Monday 9 January 2012

bbswitch: new tool to switch on/off nvidia graphics cards

There is now a new tool to switch on/off nvidia graphics cards on hybrid systems in Linux. This tool is different in the way it works to acpi_call, and should allow many laptop models to have safe on/off switching of the discrete nvidia graphics card.

For more info, have a look at the README in the github page:

http://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/bbswitch

1000 active members!

Monday 2 January 2012

Hybrid Graphics as a X11 extension

One of our team members has had some discussions about Hybrid Graphics and Linux with developers at Nvidia. As a result of this discussions, consensus emerged that the best way to implement Hybrid Graphic Systems like Optimus is an X11 Extension, as it is not considered part of a kernel module to decide on which device an Xorg call should end.

More info about the X11 extension idea soon.

Laptops wishing for better support in 2012

People in the Linux Hybrid Graphics team has updated on the support status for their Linux laptops, and the requests go from the not perfect to the not supported at all:

There is a big question mark over the new Nvidia GTX 660M cards, and information is needed from notebooks with this cards.

The Sony Vaio Z series Z1/Z12 models are still not playing well with bumblebee/ironhide/acpi_call and only cold rebooting will achieve graphics card switching.

The Samsung RF511 can use optirun, but there are no enable/disable calls available at the moment. Please submit your DSDT info if you have this or related models, specially if you have updated your BIOS lately.

The Asus N61JV seems to lack support, please give us more details on trying to install the hybrid graphics packages bumblebee/ironhide/acpi_call if you have this model.

The HP Envy 13 circa 2009 has a Intel GMA4500MHD+ATI Radeon Mobility HD 4330 and the discrete card won't work with bumblebee/ironhide/acpi_call. Please report your progress in the mailing list (ml) if you've been able to have it working.

The HP dm4-1162sf ATI+intel is in a similar situation, although the binary ATI drivers v11.8 worked on Ubuntu 10.04 or Debian Stable. On newer distros/kernel other hardware are better supported (sound and intel graphic driver for example) but ATI fails in all case...

The Dell XPS14z, Dell L502X have partial support. Is it working for you? Email the ml.

The Thinkpad W520 can use bumblebee/ironhide, but lacks the ability to save battery power by deactivating the graphics card while on a session, although it can bee rebooted and cold swiched off using the BIOS.

More updates soon!

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