Installing bumblebee on Freya

Question

I'm using Elementary OS Freya with UEFI mode. My laptop has two graphic cards (Intel 4400 and nVidia 860 GTX) and it is getting very hot after using about 30-60 minutes.

I tried to install bumblebee but every way I tried (like https://gist.github.com/jorgemario/96b18938090d2bd36405) the nVidia module was not installed correctly and said:

modprobe: FATAL: Module bbswitch not found.
[  924.996622] [ERROR]Module bbswitch could not be loaded (timeout?)
[  924.996656] [WARN]No switching method available. The dedicated card will always be on.
[  924.997915] [ERROR]Module 'nvidia' is not found.

Edit:

One thing that i should mention is if Luís's answer not working properly try to disable secure boot and UEFI from bios setting.

Answer 1

23/04/2016 UPDATE

PLEASE REFER TO MY OTHER ANSWER

11/09/15 UPDATE

DON'T FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS. THEY ARE NOT NEEDED ANYMORE BECAUSE OF THE RECENT UPDATE OF THE GRAPHICAL STACK THAT OCURRED ON ELEMENTARY FREYA

This is how I managed to install bumblebee and the nvidia driver in elementary OS. Unfortunately, I am unable to install any version higher than nvidia-331. Every attempt to install nvidia official drivers or xorg-edgers drivers or any other driver different from the 331 ended up with no login screen.

I was helped by the fact that I installed elementary OS on a Btrfs partition. I would strongly encourage everyone to do that before trying to mess with the graphics driver. The funny thing is that I have done several installations of the driver in Ubuntu machines before, for some reason it is a lot harder to do it on elementary OS. This is a nice operating system, it definitely deserves a try, but it can be a little rough at the edges at this point. I also plan to update in here for the other modifications I needed to do to the system.

So only follow this instructions if you can afford losing everything on you machine, do it for your own risk, ok?

If you decide to install elementary OS on a BTRFS partition, go and do your first backup using Timemshift. Then learn how to use the app.

Install bumblebee stable ppa

For some reason the bumblebee package on the repos do not work properly, the deamon keeps turning off. Also, the xorg-edgers ppa is incompatible with the modified version of lighdm from elementary OS and, even though, the installation can be done succesfully, you will end up stuck on a black screen in the first reboot after the installation.

The solution I found is to use this old ppa. I know, this is not perfect, but this was the only way to get bumblebee to work in my machine, and maybe this is also your case:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bumblebee/stable -y
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install bumblebee nvidia-331primus

Then you have to make sure the bumblebee.conf is properly set:

sudo nano /etc/bumblebee/bumblebee.conf

and add the modify as follows ( source ):

[bumblebee] section: after "Driver=" insert "nvidia"
[nvidia-driver] section: after "KernelDriver=" insert "nvidia-XXX"
[nvidia-driver] section: after "LibraryPath=" insert "/usr/lib/nvidia-XXX, /usr/lib/nvidia-331-updates:/usr/lib32/nvidia-XXX"
[nvidia-driver] section: after "XorgModulePath=" insert "/usr/lib/nvidia-XXX/xorg,/usr/lib/xorg/modules"

Where XXX is the nvidia driver you have installed, in the example: nvidia-331

In my case, a simple sudo service bumblebeed restart did the job, but you may need to restart.

Answer 2

THIS IS AN UPDATE FROM MY PREVIOUS ANSWER, SINCE A LOT HAVE CHANGED IN ELEMENTARY FREYA

Note that this answer uses ppas, which isn't advisable in a elementaryOS set up. However, to my knowledge, there is not an alternative way to do this. Thus, the instructions.

This is how I managed to install bumblebee and the nvidia driver in elementary OS. Unfortunately, I am unable to properly install any version higher than nvidia-355. Every attempt to install nvidia official drivers or xorg-edgers drivers or any other driver different from the 355 ended up with black screen.

I was helped by the fact that I installed Timeshift in my machine. I would strongly encourage everyone to do that before trying to mess with the graphics driver. The funny thing is that I have done several installations of the driver in Ubuntu machines before, for some reason it is a lot harder to do it on elementary OS.

Only follow this instructions if you can afford losing everything in you machine, do it for your own risk, ok?

Run your first backup using Timemshift.

Install opengl stable ppa & the graphics-drivers ppa

For some reason the bumblebee package on the repos do not work properly, the deamon keeps turning off. There is no need to install xorg-edgers ppa anymore.

The solution I found is to use the opengl+graphics-drivers stable ppas.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa -y
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:oibaf/graphics-drivers -y
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install bumblebee nvidia-355

Then you have to make sure the bumblebee.conf is properly set:

sudo nano /etc/bumblebee/bumblebee.conf

and add the modify as follows ( source ):

[bumblebee] section: after "Driver=" insert "nvidia"
[nvidia-driver] section: after "KernelDriver=" insert "nvidia-XXX"
[nvidia-driver] section: after "LibraryPath=" insert "/usr/lib/nvidia-XXX, /usr/lib/nvidia-331-updates:/usr/lib32/nvidia-XXX"
[nvidia-driver] section: after "XorgModulePath=" insert "/usr/lib/nvidia-XXX/xorg,/usr/lib/xorg/modules"

Where XXX is the nvidia driver you have installed, in the example: nvidia-355

In my case, a simple sudo service bumblebeed restart did the job, but you may need to restart.

If anyone managed to install bumblebee with later drivers, please report how you did it in the comments and I may update this answer. It seems that gala won't work with later version in my tests.