nvman

nvman is a manager for two services that solve the NVIDIA Optimus problem in laptops. Sometimes you want to run a program with bumblebee regarding the performance, but sometimes you want to run a program with optimus-manager regarding that you have to log out and log in. That can be tedious and both services can be conflictive, if I want to have both on my system I need to take care about who of those is enabled?, who is active right now?, am I using nvidia or intel driver?, who is my default service?

WARNING: This was only tested on Arch Linux.

Dependencies

• bumblebee
• primus
• optimus-manager (AUR)

How to install (Arch Linux)

It's actually pretty easy

yay -S nvman

Config

Config is system-wide at /etc/nvman/config and it only saves what's your default service

Example:

default = optimus

Usage

• If you want to run something with primusrun

  nvman run 'your command'

  Example:

  nvman run glxgears

  This will fail if you are currently using nvidia with optimus

  More info: man primusrun

• If you want to completely use nvidia (This will log out you instantly)

  nvman switch nvidia

  Or if you want to go back to intel

  nvman switch intel

  Or let optimus-manager toggle it for you

  nvman switch auto

  More info: optimus-manager

• Set the default service (it will enabled)

  nvman default (optimus|bumblebee)

• If your default service is optimus, set the startup mode for it

  nvman startup (intel|nvidia|nvidia_once)

  More info: optimus-manager

• Check the current status of your NVIDIA Optimus setup

  nvman status

  Example output:

   Optimus: active (enabled)
   Bumblebee: inactive (disabled)
   Default service: optimus
   Default startup for optimus is intel
   Currently using nvidia with optimus
  

Advantages

• Setting a default service will automatically disable the other one and save your preferences.
• Using nvman run will start the bumblebee service (if it wasn't already active) and stop optimus
• Using nvman switch will start the optimus service (if it wasn't already active) and stop bumblebee
• If you enable nvman.service, it will check at boot time if optimus and bumblebee are both enabled or disabled, if that happens it will enable only your default service (in order to avoid conflicts)