Nope. It doesn’t. Just as a test I tried a Linux native game (American Truck Simulator on Steam, it has native Linux runtimes) it runs as slow as garbage in Manjaro. It works like a charm on Mint.
/etc/X11/
The folder is almost empty compared to all the things I see on Mint.
And in /etc/X11/mhwd.d/ the nvidia.conf file is empty. All it has is this:
##
## Generated by mhwd - Manjaro Hardware Detection
##
What if you try what I said for your Steam games then?
//EDIT: right click your game in Steam, click Properties, add it to the Launch Options.
I will have to add that command to every single thing I want to run with the GPU? That doesn’t sound like normal usage for me and more like a huge bothersome that I didn’t have with Mint. But I can’t use Mint anymore, it’s going into End of Life support and newer versions don’t ship with KDE Plasma.
Anyways, I want to use Blender and run Windows games with Wine or Lutirs as well, why should this be so cluncky and overcomplicated? And I decided to go for Manjaro because those become outdated and stop working when updates come and the available tools remain outdated…
It’s late, I will have to try this tomorrow.
We could discuss that later, first try, then give result. Then we can see how to improve things but first things first, do the driver work?
ok… I read the README:
On version 384.130, the only way to switch the GPU was with randr.
Now on version 470.63.01, there is also primerenderoffload, but the old behavior is still there with randr.
So you have to configure it like described on the README. I am sorry, but Manjaro does not everything like you used to have on Linux Mint. Primerenderoffload is the default here, if your need the other way, go for it.
Otherwise stay on Linux Mint where everything works like a charm. No one is forcing you to use Manjaro in any way. 
It was causing issues already, some KDE desktop effects such as the cube desktop were not working at all. After removing it, they work again.
Anyways, I just tried adding the prime-run %command% to American Truck Simulator on Steam. It seems to be working. it seems playable. But now how do I get other things to work? And all I get in the Nvidia XServer Settings is a percentage of usage, nothing else.
That’s quite strange, the Nvidia driver provided a way much simpler and more practical way of doing it with a switch in the Nvidia Xserver Settings interface. Why is that missing here? So maybe this machine could actually be working with the Nouveau Open Source drivers but I have to do all that? Oh but now that I remember it, the Nouveau drivers didn’t even recognize the VRAM.
I guess I don’t have much other choice. Other distros don’t come with all the capabilites I need. Then again, wasn’t Manjaro about making Arch usable for everyone just like Ubuntu and Mint make Linux usable for everyone?
Sorry but I can’t do that. The situation is forcing me. I am cornered with an old laptop, that’s all I have, my PC is much older and it’s starting to fail. Mint doesn’t ship with KDE anymore and I got tired of asking them for similar features for Mate and Cinnamon (that used to exist there as well) and they would simply say won’t fix.
If they don’t want to keep the quality and maintain functionalities that existed before, then I can’t do much. If functions (even if some aesthetically pleasing capabilities) in Linux don’t remain consistent how can anyone expect Linux on the desktop to be considered anything else than a joke? Windows users laugh at me on Facebook when I say I Linux can be used as an alternative!
When you were on Linux Mint,you were on NVIDIA mode,meaning everything you do (Firefox,Discord,Steam Games etc) was rendering on your NVIDIA gpu,while this can be great,it also increase the heat of the laptop that some people can concerned and the battery life of the laptop will not be great because the NVIDIA gpu is ON all the time (thats what the iGPU is for,but you are not using it at all).
This was the only way to have a proper NVIDIA functionality back in the day (384.130 drivers),now (470 drivers) things are little different and much like Windows.
Everything is rendering your iGPU,and you do a prime-run when you want some application to use the NVIDIA gpu.
Now this process is automatic with application that uses Vulkan or with CUDA applications,but OpenGL still needs prime-run,so when you said
Sounds like American Truck Simulator uses OpenGL,hence the slowness and why you needed the prime-run in the launch options,but normally all the games with Proton and new natives (like Splitgate) uses Vulkan,so the NVIDIA gpu is detected automatically,you can test it by yourself if you run the Windows version with Proton,now you will be using Vulkan (maybe this can increase the performance of the game as well).
Of course if you don’t like this and want everything to render with the NVIDIA gpu just like you were on Linux Mint you can still do it,just install optimus-manager and change from hybrid mode (the mode you are right now on Manjaro) to NVIDIA mode.
Things are not exactly that way.
Please take a look at this screenshot from my Linux Mint. There’s a simple switch there in the Nvidia Xserver Settings interface that allows me to change between integrated graphics and the discrete Nvidia graphics.
Wanna know a weird fact about all this? I have always left that switch ON Nvidia! maybe because of the way I handle this laptop always using a cooling pad it never gets too hot even if the Nvidia GPU is always being used, the fan only kicked on whenever I went into heavily demanding tasks, but it is calm otherwise. Even the battery is still functional (albeit the typical degradation, it always looses some capacity over time no matter what you do)
THIS!!! This must be it! This must be the package I am missing! I will try it!
I was meaning about the NVIDIA or Intel switch,there was no “on-demand” or “hybrid” to use just one application to use the NVIDIA like nowadays.
And btw,that switch is not available on Arch based like Manjaro,I think is a Ubuntu thing exclusive,but nothing to worry about since we have optimus-manager for that.
I can help if you want
Just install optimus-manager with
pamac install optimus-manager
Now since you are using KDE you need to do this
Manjaro ships with a default configuration for SDDM (the default login manager for KDE) which overrides some keys needed by optimus-manager. To use optimus-manager, you need to edit the file
/etc/sddm.confand simply put a#before the line starting withDisplayCommandand the one starting withDisplayStopCommand.
Reboot and now should be able to switch,in the terminal type
optimus-manager --switch nvidia
logout and login again,now you are in NVIDIA mode and the settings in the NVIDIA control panel will be available (except the switch like i said above)
Oh I see. So you mean this? Because there’s another option to select that in both Manjaro and Mint:
Unbelievable. But being open source… what is going on here?
Wait! It’s the closed source drivers! So Ubuntu pays Nvidia for a better drivers interface or something?
So then it’s not what I wanted. But it seems I won’t need it either.
I tried it anyways, but it made the Nvidia Xserver Settings crash. I had not seen your post so maybe I needed to do that SDDM extra change, but I uninstalled it anyways.
Can’t believe how lackluster the Nvidia Xserver Settings interface is looking here. Heck! It’s even missing X server config
No,thats just to control the clock speed on the card.
I don’t think so,and I don’t know any details about that.
So what exactly you wanted? If you wanted all the options of NVIDIA XServer Settings then thats what you need to do because in hybrid mode for some reason most of the options don’t appear (thats why the lackluster interface),also this will make everything to render on your NVIDIA gpu just like you were on Linux Mint.
No, it must be this package: Ubuntu – Details of package nvidia-prime in focal
It is a script equally to optimus-manager, but nested into the nvidia settings.
Written from a canonical dev:
# Copyright 2013 Canonical Ltd.
# Author: Alberto Milone <alberto.milone@canonical.com>
Then as expected the drivers were working, you just had to offload your work to the Nvidia card, that is how it works by default on Nvidia with hybrid drivers in Manjaro.
Now if you want, as explained already, switch to Nvidia only mode with the help of optimus-manager tool. Then the Nvidia driver should be full featured as this will be what is now used by default (in hybrid mode it works on the Intel video card, the Nvidia is here to offload only).
I hope you’re right. Now I will have to be investigating if something uses OpenGl or not and what command will be needed to make it use the GPU.
I tried this again.
And also followed this step
After reboot Nvidia Xserver Settings crashes on load. It never shows up.
Then they must have done something else. Optimus-manager just causes Nvidia XServer Settings to crash.
That’s the part of the drivers that is not working. I may be able to get something by using that command to make the game use the GPU, but it feels clunky. The Nvidia XServer Settings keeps being crippled and lacking all the interface options. It doesn’t even work anymore after installing optimus-manager.
Maybe I don’t need all that. But then again how will I even know if a game or a piece of software is using the GPU? At least there was a panel indicator that said “active GPU Nvidia” in Mint, whereas Manjaro doesn’t show anything!
EDIT
Hmm OK, after reviewing whatever I could have done wrong, Nvidia XServer Settings finally seems to work, but it’s still missing that button. So I guess I am finally in Nvidia mode but there’s no easy way to switch modes.
All in all I blame Nvidia for not making the interface standard in all cases
You will stay on NVIDIA mode forever until you switch again,you can type
optimus-manager --print-mode
to see what mode are you are,if you prefer a tray icon like Mint,you can install optimus-manager-qt
pamac build optimus-manager-qt
Thats what optimus-manager is for,remember that switch in the nvidia control panel is a ubuntu thing.
You’re not getting that button, it was part of the old driver an/or probably on a modification of the distribution.
Thank you for all you have done guys. Thank you for your patience. Thank you for your time.
But I still feel uneasy. Today I booted my laptop just to find out it defaulted to intel integrated graphics.
So, nope. it didn’t stay in Nvidia mode forever.
Which means I will have to find a way to turn it on always. Such a bothersome. Luckyly optimus-manager-qt seems to have that functionality as well.
The driver is just incomplete without the optimus-manager and optimus-manager-qt packages. Being separate packages that need some tricks to be installed means there are chances for failure in any new install. I am thankful for the community members who coded optimus-manager and optimus-manager-qt , without them the Nvidia driver is a bare-bones barely functional apparently broken piece of clockwork. It doesn’t give the user any confidence that the GPU power and VRAM will be used whenever it’s most needed.
I got it. optimus-manager-qt is not a mere panel tray indicator, it has a full interface that includes that button and the capability to switch modes.
It seems it’s a bit more than that. it has both optimus-manager and optimus-manager-qt packages functionality.
But I am still worried. I have used this laptop with Mint for may years, and I would like to keep using it with Manjaro for many more years. But what if I need to reinstall Manjaro? This was just a test install in a smaller partition and I plan to keep it just in case. Will the Open Source Nouveau driver ever work? It saved my older PC when Nvidia dropped support for the Nvidia GeForce 9500 card, but what about this laptop? Nvidia’s intentions are clear, they plan to drop support for it eventually. You may say 5 years is a long time, but that old PC is almost 14 years old and it still works thanks to Linux and the Nouveau Open Source driver! Nvidia’s planned obsolescence is going against end users like me! And their careless coding with their driver meant not one but two additional packages were required to get all the functionality.
And seeing how the complexity in GPUs is becoming higher and higher, it makes me worry for future Nouveau versions will still not be able to give the users the freedom to keep using their hardware, even though it costed a good ammount of money, of time and effort.
Sorry my bad I forgot that you need to set up in startup mode,in optimus-manager-qt you can do it,just select it to nvidia.
I disagree,the driver just work as you saw with prime-run,this is the new default that should have had in the first place,Windows has it since a decade a Linux just had it recently in 3 months or so,it allows the NVIDIA gpu to turn it off and only turn it on when its necessary,it doesn’t need to be fully powered on all the time,imagine using in battery and because the NVIDIA is on your battery life will be poor like 1 hour just browsing the internet.
Also the Linux drivers that detect the NVIDIA card automatically is a recently new feature,sure OpenGL still doesn’t detect it but nowadays everything relies on Vulkan,even Zink drivers that converts OpenGL to Vulkan will be the future (or I hope at least),Windows also detect the NVIDIA card automatically with Vulkan and DirectX,not sure about OpenGL.
There is some exceptional cases where optimus-manager still comes in handy like when the HDMI external only output is laggy unless you switch to NVIDIA mode,just time will tell if NVIDIA fix the issue.
As for the Nouvau drivers well I don’t know,I not too concerned about that,by the time NVIDIA drop support for my 1050 Ti I’ll be buying a new laptop,if i’m too concerned I can just buy a AMD graphic card and use the open source mesa drivers so I don’t have to relie on some company.
Doing that is disrespectful for the user, it leaves the user wondering why the performance is so low, why is it so slow why it seems to work sometimes and doesn’t work other times. Windows drivers come with all the functionality that is missing here but can be restored thanks to those two extra packages (behavior which Mint emulated as well)
IF I set the mode to Nvidia mode while using the battery I should be warned that it will consume the battery too fast. That’s what Optimus is doing but without it the driver alone doesn’t do that. It just forces the mode it sees convenient and has no way to switch.
I hope you could see that not everyone can buy new hardware at will. I had to save for 3 years to get this laptop and now I can’t afford any new hardware and I don’t know when I will have a better job to be able to afford any hardware at all! Of course I would go with AMD if I am ever able to build a new PC, but for now all I have is my laptop with this Nvidia hybrid card, all I can do is fend for myself as I don’t know when I will be able to have new hardware! I live in a poor third world country, buying hardware here means having to import it and that means it’s more expensive than the rest of the world because of import tariffs, also the pandemic has hit us harder, more people died because our healtcare systems were already in a poor condition, many stores went out of business, etc etc etc. So, Nvidia’s planned obsolescence can indeed cause people like me more trouble. I would even say their attitude is hurtful, as they do that to sell more not caring about former customers.
