Tuesday, June 11, 2013

How to install bumblebee with latest nvidia drivers in elementaryOS


As there isn't a really great guide on how to install Bumblebee in elementaryOS Luna, here's mine!
I tried this on beta 1 as well as beta 2, and it worked flawlessly. Bumblebee brings Nvidia Optimus support to elementaryOS improving power management, gaming performance and more.

If you're a complete newbie and don't know how to use terminal commands, let me know in the comments!

  • Add the Bumblebee PPA to your system


sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bumblebee/stable


  •  For more up-to-date nvidia drivers, you need to add another PPA. This is necessary for Nvidia GT 6xxM cards. It may be optional for the GT 4xxM and GT 5xxM series. When in doubt, just install it:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates


  • Update your apt-repos:

sudo apt-get update

  • Install Bumblebee using the proprietary nvidia driver:

sudo apt-get install bumblebee bumblebee-nvidia


  •  Make sure the right headers for your kernel are installed

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r)


  • Install the Nvidia GeForce driver 310.14 experimental driver (via the 'updates' repository):

sudo apt-get install nvidia-experimental-310 nvidia-settings-experimental-310


  • Configure Bumblebee to use nvidia-experimental-310.

Open "/etc/bumblebee/bumblebee.conf" as root with a text editor: 
sudo scratch-text-editor /etc/bumblebee/bumblebee.conf

And change the following:
- on line 22, make sure "Driver=" is set to "nvidia", like this:
Driver=nvidia
- change the "KernelDriver=" (on line 47) to "nvidia-experimental-310", like this:
KernelDriver=nvidia-experimental-310
- change "LibraryPath=" (on line 51) to "/usr/lib/nvidia-experimental-310:/usr/lib32/nvidia-experimental-310", so it looks like this:
LibraryPath=/usr/lib/nvidia-experimental-310:/usr/lib32/nvidia-experimental-310
- change the "XorgModulePath=" (line 54) to "XorgModulePath=/usr/lib/nvidia-experimental-310/xorg,/usr/lib/xorg/modules" so it looks like this:
XorgModulePath=/usr/lib/nvidia-experimental-310/xorg,/usr/lib/xorg/modules


  • Logout and log back in



  • Optional: install primus (this should even give you better performance than optirun with bumblebee)

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:zhurikhin/primus
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install primus


  • Change primus script:
sudo scratch-text-editor /usr/bin/primusrun

And change the following:on line 16: export PRIMUS_libGLa=${PRIMUS_libGLa:-'/usr/lib/nvidia-experimental-310/libGL.so.1:/usr/lib32/nvidia-experimental-310/libGL.so.1'}
on line 27: /usr/lib*/nvidia-experimental-310*|'') # nvidia is used by default



  • Test your fresh installed bumblebee or optimus with glxspheres: 

optirun glxspheres
primusrun glxspheres

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