hybrid-graphics-linux team mailing list archive

[Lekensteyn <lekensteyn@xxxxxxxxx>]

History goes like this:

In the beginning, there was nothing. Nvidia Optimus users cried for a
solution. Then
came Martin Juhl with a workaround which he named Prime-NG. Since it was not
even remotely close to a real solution like Prime, he renamed it to
Bumblebee. The
names Optimus, Prime, Bumblebee and Ironhide all come from the Transformer
movie if anybody wonders.

The workaround (he called it a "solution", but I prefer to speak of a
"workaround") was
announced on this mailing list (hybrid-graphics-linux) and varying success
had been
reported. It caught many attention after the famous rm -rf /usr bug which
has been
spread on Reddit (https://github.com/MrMEEE/bumblebee/issues/123).

An online database has been added to it, containing user-submitted
configurations and
later ACPI calls had been introduced. Occasionally, users contributed to
the code and
finally ArchangeGabriel and me (Lekensteyn) decided that a team would work
better
than a single user repository as subteams could be created for each
repository.

We decided to rewrite the old MrMEEE/bumblebee codebase which contained some
design flaws and got rid of the online database. This allowed for offline
and more
secure installation. MrMEEE decided not to take part in this project and
instead
removed support for distributions other than Ubuntu and continued with the
name
Ironide. We continued with the name "Bumblebee", and use TBP/Bumblebee (TBP
=
The Bumblebee Project) to distinguish from the original MrMEEE/bumblebee.
Unfortunately, this caused a lot people to believe that Bumblebee was dead
and that
Ironhide is better or even "deprecates" TBP/Bumblebee. Although the
configuration
database is quite horrible (it downloads unconfirmed scripts which can
contain even
malicous or incomplete code), it sometimes just "works". The Bumblebee
Project
team decided not to supply with such a feature by default because we're
focused
on stability (see also
https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/Bumblebee/wiki/ACPI-Removed)
A lot issues on https://github.com/MrMEEE/ironhide/issues are a result of
misconfigured ACPI calls.

While Ironhide is work from one man (Martin) and receives no code review
from
other developers, the Bumblebee Project team has several developers with
varying distributions. The main contributors (in random order) are:

- Samsagax (Arch Linux + nouveau)
- ArchangeGabriel (Ubuntu + nvidia)
- Thulinma (new since Bumblebee 3 (unreleased yet), Mandriva + nvidia)
- Lekensteyn (Ubuntu + nouveau / nvidia)

Support for other distros:

- pvriens (Fedora, but is very busy + nvidia)
- Ximi (OpenSUSE, but does not communicate with us whatsoever and won't even
  read this rant on him I guess. + nvidia)

We've not been sitting down, better ways to achieve PM has been searched for
and after analyzing a lot ACPI tables, I found out that two kinds of calls
were
quite universal which resulted in the bbswitch module.

With help of Thulinma, Bumblebee received a development boost which yielded
a C daemon+client with better communication possiblities, a more reliable
way
to detect the server. acpi_call has been dropped (for now) as it does not
play
nicely with suspend. bbswitch and vga_switcheroo has been added.

Hopefully you now get a better overview of TBP/Bumblebee and the difference
with Martins projects.

Regards,
Lekensteyn

On Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 3:42 PM, Nuno Ferreira <nuno.f.ferreira@xxxxxxxxx>wrote:

> On 01/03/2012 01:48 PM, Albert Vilella wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Is bbswitch and bumblebeed ready for testing and reporting back to the
> list?
> >
> > Given bbswitch would put the bumblebee/bbswitch combo basically on par
> > with ironhide, I would update the
> > http://launchpad.net/~hybrid-graphics-linux info for testers...
> >
> > Cheers
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~hybrid-graphics-linux
> > Post to     : hybrid-graphics-linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~hybrid-graphics-linux
> > More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
>
> The question that comes to mind, really, is why do both projects exist
> at the same time? Such a specific feature-set, so recent and so filled
> with (HW/ACPI) documentation gaps.
>
> Isn't this a good example where dispersing resources is really bad?
>
> On a personal note, I currently use IronHide on Oneiric and previously
> used Bumblebee on Natty, which one should I be using? LENOVO T520
> (4243RT8) with Nvidia NVS4200M + i915.
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Nuno
>