Question about Solus on laptop with dual GPU

tflovik

Hi.
I have a LENOVO LEGION 5 PRO 16ACH6H with AMD Ryzen 5 5600H and Nvidia RTX 3060.
At the moment i have POP OS installed on it and everything works fine, i can use the RTX 3060 if i choose performance mode or just set it to balanced so it switches automatic depending which program i use.
I want to install Solus 4.4 Budgie on this machine, have tried booting up with the Budgie ISO. It booted up fine.
If i install Solus 4.4 Budgie and then install Nvidia driver with Doflicky will i then be able to choose which GPU i want to use or is there som inbuilt automatic switching?

Anyone who have experience with a setup like this that can share some experiences?

[deleted]

tflovik When the Nvidia driver is installed it will use the Nvidia GPU.

tflovik

[deleted] So then i cant switch to the AMD GPU if i want to use less power if i run it on battery?
Is there a way to switch between the two GPU's?

tflovik

When reading the blog on Buddies of Budgie for the 10.7 release i noticed this text:
Dual-GPU Support
Budgie Menu now leverages switcheroo-control if available to switch between GPU environments when launching applications that request it. Users with dual-GPU setups can now launch their applications without necessarily having to worry about which GPU is in use and manually switching between them.

On this machine i checked and swicheroo-control is indeed installed, so then i would assume that Solus now has the ability to make users switch GPU.
I can not test this before i install Solus on my Lenovo Legion, but it would be nice if someone could confirm that this works.

FAb7D

tflovik

Budgie Menu now leverages switcheroo-control if available..

IF AVAIBLE, this is the point, currently, as stalebrim says, I don't think it is, maybe it is for ubuntu budgie.
Probably if you search you will also find something, it is a topic often debated on the forum.
ex: https://discuss.getsol.us/d/630-how-to-manage-my-optimus-card

tflovik

I just gave in and installed Solus Budgie on my Lenovo Legion.
Here is the output from neofetch.
Cant find any place where i can switch between the GPU's and right clicking a game doesn't give any options.
So what GPU is currently running now?

Edit: Nvidia driver is installed with Doflicky.

zmaint

I found this googling, but I don't have a dual GPU system to see if it works on.

https://www.baeldung.com/linux/check-monitor-active-gpu

And also this: glxinfo |grep -e OpenGL.vendor -e OpenGL.renderer

tflovik

zmaint When i tried: glxinfo |grep -e OpenGL.vendor -e OpenGL.renderer
i got this result: OpenGL vendor string: AMD
OpenGL renderer string: AMD Radeon Graphics (renoir, LLVM 15.0.7, DRM 3.52, 6.4.8-247.current)

So even though i have the nvidia driver installed it is running on the AMD GPU from the CPU.

In the Bios it was set to hybrid mode, when i switched to discrete graphics and booted i didn't get the graphical login screen, so i used CTRL+Alt+F2 and logged in terminal.
Typing startx gave me several error messages so i had to go in Bios again and set hybrid mode.

Seems like Solus wont let me run the Nvidia driver even though it is installed.
What to do now?

tflovik

FAb7D I'm not shure this will work on my laptop since it has an AMD CPU/GPU and not Intel.
I installed Linux Mint instead on this laptop and after installing the Nvidia driver i automatically got a new applet in the panel that allow me to switch which GPU to use and it works fine both with AMD GPU and Nvidia GPU out of the box. No extra configuring needed.

I will continue to use Solus on my other machines with only one GPU, but it seems like a hassle to get Solus to work with dual GPU(AMD + Nvidia).

WetGeek

tflovik it seems like a hassle to get Solus to work with dual GPU(AMD + Nvidia).

I think youre on to something here, and it may be that AMD is the problem in this case. My laptop has Intel + Nvidia, and it's never had a problem with Solus. (Or any other distro I've tried.)

Graphics:
Device-1: Intel HD Graphics 630 vendor: Dell driver: i915 v: kernel
Device-2: NVIDIA GM107 [GeForce 940MX] vendor: Dell driver: nouveau

infinitymdm

I think we're dancing around a bigger question here: What is the current state of dual-GPU switching compatibility in Solus?

Last I checked (and it has been a few years, so my information is probably quite out-of-date), Solus wasn't really built for dynamically switching between GPUs. There are other distros that cater to this - the first that comes to mind is Pop!_OS. I'm wondering where Solus is at with this now.

tflovik

Would be lovely if dual gpu support could be enabled by default in Solus, then i would switch back from Linux Mint on my Lenovo Legion because i prefer the Budgie desktop and the snappiness of Solus 🙂

TraceyC

Hybrid graphics are, unfortunately, not well supported in Solus yet. We have an issue on our tracker to address this.

tflovik

TraceyC That's nice to hear, at least i enjoy using Solus on two other machines that i use 90 % of my private computer time. At work i am forced to use windows, i work for the government and cant choose which os to use there.