I’m currently running openSUSE 12.3 with bumblebee installed and everything is working fine. I’m planning to upgrade to 13.1 as soon as I have time but I was wondering if anyone could share their opinions on upgrading to kernel 3.12. I know 13.1 comes with kernel 3.11 but I’m considering upgrading the kernel to 3.12. I read that it’s supposed to have dynamic power control (for optimus) built in so there should be no need for bumblebee, is this correct? Are there any potential pitfalls to upgrading to this kernel that I should be aware of? Do any of you have experience with kernel 3.12 with an optiumus GPU? I know it hasn’t been out long. Thanks.
I thought I’d reply to this thread in case anyone else out there with hybrid graphics is curious. I upgraded to kernel 3.12 and uninstalled bumblebee. My hybrid graphics appear to be functioning properly without the need for bumblebee. However, I have not run any graphics intensive programs or games so I cannot comment on that yet. But, the discrete card is off by default and not consuming any power.
All it (3.12) does is disable the discrete gpu for power saving. You still need bumblebee to play games, etc.
It doesn’t disable the GPU, it simply powers it down … you should still be able to utilise it when required via prime (hence the reason its runtime PM) … of course, in this case, youre dealing with the lesser 3d capable nouveau driver stack, so bumblebee would indeed be more appropriate in applicable scenarios.
Very interesting.
So if I only want to disable the dedicated graphic card (because I don’t need it), is now sufficient to install the 3.12 kernel, without installing bumblebee? 