Setting Nvidia as the Primary GPU on AMD/NVIDIA laptop

swagglepuff

This is the last step for getting everything up and running. I know that there is an optimus switch for solus. However that only works for intel/nvidia hybrid laptops. I have a lovely amd/nvidia hybrid laptop so that option is not going to work for me. Unless someone has it forked for amd and not intel. So I do have a working working prime render offload .conf that works perfectly and only uses nvidia when I tell it to. However, I prefer to just click on said program and just know that its using nvidia. I am not really concerned with battery life because the computer is plugged in most of the time anyway. What I have tried is taking the 10-nvidia.conf from /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/ and added the line Option "PrimaryGPU" "yes" to both output class sections and then move the file to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/. This is how I achieve an nvidia only system with both fedora 32 and ubuntu 20.04. However that is not the case for solus apparently. I messed around with the different configurations and tried changing some of the options to match my prime render and they dont work. I change the identifier to just nvidia from NVIDIA Card + DRM and the No DRM output class as well. I deleted the second out put class. I have added a section for server layout that didnt work either. I have also just change the 10-nvidia to only have the section of the prime render that involves nvidia with the primary gpu option added. They all end up with a black screen on boot.

Here is the server layout section I tried adding

Section "ServerLayout"
	Identifier "layout"
	Option "AllowNVIDIAGPUScreens"
	Option "PrimaryGPU" "yes"
EndSection

Here is my working prime render offload

Section "ServerLayout"
	Identifier "layout"
	Option "AllowNVIDIAGPUScreens"
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier "AMDGPU"
	Driver "amdgpu"
	Option "TearFree" "true"
EndSection

Section "OutputClass"
	Identifier "iGPU"
	MatchDriver "amdgpu"
	Driver "modesetting"
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier "nvidia"
	Driver "nvidia"
EndSection

Section "OutputClass"
	Identifier "nvidia"
	MatchDriver "nvidia-drm"
	Driver "nvidia"
	Option "AllowEmptyInitialConfiguration"
	ModulePath "/usr/lib64/nvidia/xorg"
	ModulePath "/usr/lib64/xorg/modules"
EndSection

Here is the 10-nvidia.conf

Section "Files"
    ModulePath "/usr/lib64/nvidia/modules"
    ModulePath "/usr/lib64/xorg/modules"
EndSection

Section "OutputClass"
    Identifier "NVIDIA Card + DRM"
    MatchDriver "nvidia-drm"
    Option "AllowEmptyInitialConfiguration" "true"
    ModulePath "/usr/lib64/nvidia/modules"
    ModulePath "/usr/lib64/xorg/modules"
EndSection

Section "OutputClass"
    Identifier "NVIDIA Card + No DRM"
    MatchDriver "nvidia"
    Option "AllowEmptyInitialConfiguration" "true"
    ModulePath "/usr/lib64/nvidia/modules"
    ModulePath "/usr/lib64/xorg/modules"
EndSection

skillrex

swagglepuff Hey, hope you might interested in trying this out, I too have laptop with AMD/NVIDIA combo, tried an solution provided in the manjaro forum with little tweaks to make Solus 4.3 run solely on discrete graphics(nvidia).

Assuming nvidia drivers are installed, The steps are the same as in the mentioned Manjaro thread, with changes done in path wherever necessary for Solus OS. Configuration can be taken from the same thread.

Move xorg conf if any present.
mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.bak
Creating new xorg configuration, /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/optimus.conf
Blacklisting not needed as it's already available in /usr/lib/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf
Enable nvidia-drm.modeset in /usr/lib/modprobe.d/nvidia-drm.conf
Follow the instruction in the thread according to the login manager for setting output source, i have tested this is on GDM and it works, not sure about other login managers.