Hi everyone, I sucessfully updated my laptop (Dell Latitude) to KDE6 and by now got everything back to work the way I want.
However, the one thing I am still struggling with is Intel/nVidia Hybrid Grafik support for my docking station (HDMI and Display Port) dual monitor setup.
For years I had a reliable setup using X11, bumblebeed.service, intel-virtual-output and xrandr to create a virtual display which will be picked up just fine under Plasma.
Now with the recent update to KDE6 and the switch to Wayland this isn’t working any longer. The issue seems to be Wayland related because once I switch to X11 all is in order again.
So I thought that before I make an effort troubleshooting I’d check here if my setup is actually supposed to work? If not I will happily default back to X11 (didn’t notice a difference with Wayland anyway to be honest) and move on. If this should work, maybe with your help I can figure out what needs to be done?
Back to two monitors now, not even a reboot required.
Bluetooth is still broken though…I guess that will need a reboot.
Thanks for helping along
In that thread, you mention optrun, isn’t that for optimus? Is that still valid? Should you not use prime-run?
I do know that historically using prime in combination with multiple monitors has been a pain in the a**, if even possible.
I have not followed the development of it since I only use one monitor with prime so my CPU handles rendering normally and GPU is called upon with prime-run.
About the docking station.
I have a feeling this has to do with “reverse prime” and even though I have thought to myself, “lets completely learn this”, I always give up after getting frustratingly confused every time.
I also have a feeling it might involve xrander, and not sure how that works in combination with wayland, you probably know more about that than I do.
Plain Arch on this laptop, but I stick around the EndevourOS forum because they are nice and knowledgeable people
<In the link you posted, this is no longer true?>
That “it did the trick” was for getting back to X11, Wayland is still broken.
I may be confusing things because it’s been years since I set it up and haven’t touched it since. And like you wrote, it’s been a true PITA
If I remember correctly Optimus was just a different way to talk to the nVidia card, but my knowledge is old and fading
Yes it does, I had to configure my virtual output with Xrandr once.
And that’s exactly why I started this thread, if someone more knowledgeable tells me that this simply won’t work because of xyz not being implemented I am back to X11 and we are done.
However, if there are new ways to do this with Wayland I’d be happy to spend some time to get it to work and fully stay on Wayland for good.
They are, and you get murdered less for “asking the wrong question” than on Arch forums…
I actually came in after the introduction of the hybrid prime drivers were introduced and have only used them so I have zero experience with optimus, so don’t listen too closely to what I say when it comes to that.
So just to be clear, you can not even log into wayland, but x11 works?
And on x11, the dock is the problem?
And you are on the latest nvidia drivers?
Output of inxi -G please.
Sorry no, X11 works, docked and undocked. I am writing this post from an X11 session with both monitors active.
What’s not working is Wayland+Docked. Wayland undocked works fine too.
With Wayland active I can get one external monitor, the one wired to the Intel GPU and the Laptop screen active in parallel. But I somehow am unable to activate the docks Display Port which is wired to the nVidia GPU.
So it’s really only about if this Optimus/Hybrid/whatever we call it thing is supposed to work with Wayland or not.
It really sounds like a reverse prime (that is what nvidia calls it) thing, you need to route the output to the specific port, and that is done with xrandr as far as I know.
And now we immediately steps in to confusion zone for me because if you read the arch wiki on Optimus I linked to above, when looking at point 4 " Use switchable graphics" it references to Prime instead:
4.1 Using PRIME render offload
This is the official NVIDIA method to support switchable graphics.
So before I elaborate. We could try to figure it out, but it might take a lot of time and hair pulling, are you willing to do that or are you fine with using x11?
I ask because I could invest some time into this, but only if it actually leads to something. xD
Things are coming back as we start writing about this subject, yes Optimus is about switching between Intel and nVidia, I decided against Optimus back then because I have no need to switch between Intel and nVidia, but rather use them both in parallel because that is the only way to get a signal at both ports of my docking Station.
One port is wired to the Intel GPU and the second port is wired to nVidia.
From a users perspective a horrible hardware design in my opinion but hey…
And as the configuration nightmares are coming back as we write about this subject I think I might better put this to rest and continue on with X11 until X11 finally breaks, or my laptop, whatever’s first.
Looks like I spoke to soon, there is in fact a new issue with KDE6 + X11 and intel-virtual-output.
The system freezes when when trying to come back from sleep. The only way to get it back seems to be via REISUB.
btrfs, smart, easy restores with snapper/timeshift?
(just so I know in case I were to give advice that might make it worse)
You do not use any of the nvidia modules.
Might not have anything to do with this, but could be good to try.
Check the arch wiki, it is pretty straight forward how to add them.
IIRC there is also a nvidia-modesetting thing you prob should add in the kernel line in grub. I see you have intel_iommu=on iommu=pt and I think that is correct for hw acceleration, I THINK. (I have read about it somewhere)
To me it sounds like a power thing, but nvidia and modesetting COULD be the culprit, only way to find out is to try.
More importantly easy access to files which disappeared with an “oops”
Timeshift was a little to oppinionated for me so I wrote my own little script which creates hourly snapshots and updates the Systemd-Boot files. But to be honest I never had to use the boot into snapshot feature. It’s usually just individual files I am after.
Need to read up on this. I guess I am not loading any nVidia modules because under normal/un-docked circumstances I don’t use the nVidia GPU?
Given that this setup has been working flawlessly for ~4 years something must have happened along the KDE6 upgrade, a new kernel, new nVidia driver, Bumblebee or in fact something KDE related. Got things to test…
It’s surprising how often those “oops” situations happen even though I am supposed to “know what I am doing”.
I did not find any references to bumblebee in what you provided.
Bumblebee was one of the things that came to mind that might be a problem. It is also mentioned in the trouble section of the different arch wikis for nvidia things.
Please keep us updated if you manage to find something about this.
TheRaOct
are coming back as we write about this subject I think I might better put this to rest and continue on with X11 until X11 finally breaks, or my laptop, whatever’s first. 