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I wonder if installing Nvidia proprietary drivers is a necessary step after installing Elementary OS 6. I've been using Nvidia drivers for quite a long time but always had trouble upgrading them, sometimes needing to re-install them completely or re-install elementary os. I've always been told they provide better performance than the open-source nouveau ones, however I'm not sure if I actually need them. I usually do basic stuff on my laptop, I don't play games for example. The only thing I do that may use GPU is photo editing. I've seen the new version of elementary os has an option to turn on GPU acceleration on applications, what does that do exactly? Does that mean the app would be running on the Nvidia card instead of the Intel GPU (ah yeah I have Optimus graphics). One last question does Optimus actually work with the Nouveau driver, does it switch automatically between Intel and Nvidia or do I need to add env variables as with the Nvidia drivers? Thank you!

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  • The performance difference between proprietary and open-source drivers really depends on what hardware you have. And yes, optimus works with nouveau. More info here > wiki.freedesktop.org/nouveau/Optimus
    – Maccer
    Oct 20, 2021 at 20:22
  • Thank you Maccer! As far as I understand switching between the Intel and Nvidia graphics card can be done using the DRI_PRIME env variable set to 1. In terms of hardware I'm on a Huawei Matebook X Pro (2017 edition) with an Nvidia MX150 graphic card.
    – Thomas Sayer
    Oct 20, 2021 at 20:49

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