An Intel-only solution on an NVIDIA Optimus Laptop

[us3rnotfound]

I have a laptop with Optimus and without an option in BIOS dealing with hybrid graphics settings. However I only selected the Intel 915 component in the kernel config device drivers. lspci-k shows there’s no kernel driver for the NVIDIA discrete graphics. Is this good enough? Can I assume I’m only using Intel in my X environment? How can I confirm that %100?

[us3rnotfound]

Alright here's the deal: I want the lowest power being used at all times (don't care about dedicated graphics).

Searching for active GPUs I get the following:

[mike155]

I use sys-power/bbswitch to turn off the NVIDIA chip: https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/bbswitch

Works perfectly fine. My wattmeter shows that power consumption goes down by 4 W as soon as I run

[us3rnotfound]

[mike155]

bbswitch works without an NVIDIA driver. There's no need to install an NVIDIA driver.

The only thing to remember is: whenever you install a new kernel, you must re-install bbswitch.

[us3rnotfound]