FAQ

Work in progress.

Developers: please add all you want and consider relevant, please use references whenever possible.

What is Bumblebee?

Bumblebee is a effort to make Nvidia Optimus enabled laptops work in GNU/Linux systems. Such feature involves two graphics cards with two different power consumption profiles plugged in a layered way sharing a single framebuffer.

Where did the name "Bumblebee" come from?

Nvidia' technology is called "Optimus", Dave Airlie' work for supporting Optimus hardware is named "PRIME". All of these names come from the Transformers movie. Martin Juhl initially named the idea for this project "PRIME-NG" but since it was by no means a real solution nor better idea for PRIME, it was renamed to "Bumblebee".

I'm confused about so many projects (MrMeee/Bumblebee, Ironhide, TBP/Bumblebee). Which one should I install?

How it works?

The Bumblebee server disables the discrete video card if no client is detected (if power management is enabled which is the default setting). This is done by keeping track of programs that request Bumblebee to run themselves on the discrete nvidia card. On such requests, a X server is started which makes use of the nvidia card. Because the frames cannot directly be displayed on the display due to the Optimus design, VirtualGL is used to copy frames to the visible display which runs on the integrated Intel GPU.

I have a laptop with Nvidia card and an integrated graphics card, how can Bumblebee help me?

By disabling the nvidia card, power is saved. This improves battery life. If you need more graphical performance, Bumblebee can run the program using the Nvidia card.

How to know if my graphics card is supported?

Bumblebee has two parts: power management and the ability to run programs using the discrete card. The first feature is supported with bbswitch which should be able to support all Optimus models. The ability to use the nvidia card depends on the driver: open-source nouveau and proprietary nvidia.

How do I install Bumblebee?

The installation of the Bumblebee core is easy, especially with the nouveau driver. If you want to use the proprietary nvidia driver, it is going to be more difficult because certain nvidia libraries must be moved to avoid conflicts with the Mesa libraries for 3D acceleration. Read the README for installation instructions or check distribution specific documentation: Arch Linux, Ubuntu.