Switching between laptop Optimus GPUs to PCIe dedicated GPU

English Hardware
1

Hello,
I am using an Alienware 13 notebook with the regular nVidia discrete (960M) + Intel integrated “Optimus” configuration. After installing bumblebee and nVidia proprietary drivers I can switch between the cards fine and everything works as expected.
When working at home I use the Alienware graphics amplifier thing, which basically means I connect a desktop class GPU (a GTX 980 in my case) using a PCI express bus to the laptop. This isn’t hot-swappable, and I need to reboot in order to take advantage of the dedicated GPU. In Windows this works perfectly. In OpenSUSE before installing Bumblebee the system could recognize the GTX980, but now lspci doesn’t list the card.
The perfect solution would be to keep having switchable graphics on the go, and to be able to use the dedicated card when booting with it.

Any assistance would be welcome.
Thank you

2

It might be worth reinstalling bumblebee and the nvidia drivers while the GPU is attached… it should then be part of the configuration. But you will probably have to plug/unplug it in a cold state every time. I don’t think bumblbee or the linux nvidia drivers would handle hotplugging.