Dell XPS 15 Ubuntu 11.04 nVidia driver install

使用这个方法，显卡终于驱动了！！！注意，安装bumblebee 之前最好重新安装显卡驱动，并且删除xorg.conf文件

$ sudo apt-get purge nvidia-current
$ sudo apt-get install nvidia-current
$ sudo rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf

然后执行下面的步骤安装bumblebee，设置的时候忘记选哪个了，但应该都好使。

Dell XPS 15 (L502X)running linux (ubuntu 11.04) with nvidia optimus support

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I ended up with a snazzy new Dell XPS for my birthday. A dream laptop for me, it even included a fancy 2 gig video card.

It came with Windows 7 (which I don’t have a direct problem with) but my preference when I compute at home is to use linux. I partitioned part of it off and loaded up the new lubuntu. Install went fine but the sucker ran hot, loud, sucked the battery and the gpu seemed to be on but not in use. Something definitely seemed off.

This lead me on a search which explained about the nvidia Optimus GPU and people struggling with this on linux.

What is Optimus?

This is a technology created by Nvidia to switch off the power hungry GPU when not needed. On my laptop it switchs from the beefy 2 gig Nvidia GPU to the onboard Intel GPU. So when not gaming or doing graphic intense work, the system is running on less power (thus longer battery, less fan noise, heat, etc).

The problem?

Nvidia did not produce any Optimus drivers for linux and has stated that there are no plans to support it on linux. Typically in the past Nvidia has supplied some closed source drivers for their nvidia cards.

The solution?

The Bumblebee Project! After digging around on the ubuntu forums, I was ready to give up. Many people stated that nvidia would not be writing this driver and there is no current solution. Then murmurs of the Bumblebee project came about. A bit buggy at first, it has really started to gain steam. I’ve been using it error free for a while and really am happy to have my laptop running somewhat smooth.

And it just got easier to install if you are using debian/ubuntu. Bumblebee has now been packaged into a PPA @ Launchpad.

First thing you’ll want to do is add the repository:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:mj-casalogic/bumblebee

Then update and install:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install bumblebee

It’ll take you through the installer which will ask you which profile you want to use. At this point from what I understand these are successful profiles submitted. All of the ones for my laptop have worked just fine.

After the install you can launch a program using the command optirun

Example: optirun java -jar ~/Downloads/minecraft.jar

This will launch minecraft using the nvidia card.

At the time of writing there is also:

Arch, OpenSuSE, Fedora, Mint support.