Fleshing out hotpluging of graphics devices on xserver -- David Airlie

David Airlie has been working on fleshing out the xserver code that will allow the server to activate added graphics hardware without requiring a restart:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.freedesktop.xorg.devel/29140

vga_switcheroo receives updates in Linux Kernel 3.3

The vga_switcheroo driver, used to switch between graphics chips, has gained a number of functions for supporting Optimus, NVIDIA's technology for enabling and disabling a discrete graphics chip on demand.

http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commitdiff;h=d099230cc355c485e556121c034b1fca5a5fd18b
Newer nVidia cards with Optimus do not support/use the DSM switching functions. Instead, it require a DSM function to be called prior to bringing a device into D3 state. No other _DSM calls are necessary before/after enabling/disabling a device. Switching between discrete and integrated GPU is not supported by this Optimus _DSM call, therefore return on the switching method.

VDPAU improvements in Mesa 8.1

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTA2MzY
Gallium3D VDPAU State Tracker Gets Ready For Action
Posted by Michael Larabel on February 28, 2012
Christian König of AMD has shared his plans for completing work on the VDPAU state tracker for Gallium3D. This Gallium3D state tracker allows for NVIDIA VDPAU video acceleration using GPU shaders on open-source hardware drivers such as Radeon and Nouveau.

Christian published a new, lengthy patch-set that adds most of the missing functionality to the VDPAU state tracker. One of the missing items that has been filled in is support for bit-map surfaces.

Additionally, these patches improved video playback by using page-flipping rather than frequently copying the frame content around. The usage of page-flipping by the VDPAU state tracker should allow for full-screen tear-free video playback, even when driving a secondary display.

In total there were 25 new patches published by this open-source AMD engineer for Gallium3D VDPAU. They can currently be found on the Mesa development list. This open-source video playback work should be another thing to look forward to with Mesa 8.1.

AMD/Intel Hybrid graphics with Sandy Bridge New Acceleration

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1930450

Nvidia Optimus Lenovo Ideapad Y570 and Y470 Linux with Bumblebee

Good news for all owners of the Lenovo IdeaPad Y470 and Lenovo IdeaPad Y570, A temporary solution has been worked out that by-passes the detection issue in the kernel:

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=42696

Until a correct fix is committed to the upstream kernel, you can use this solution for overwriting the wrongly detected ACPI handle. More information here:

https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/bbswitch/issues/2#issuecomment-3797568

Please note that this is just a temporary solution.

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.

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.