The Tech Influencer

This page explains the procedure to install the NVIDIA proprietary driver together with Bumblebee / bbswitch, which allows the use of NVIDIA's Optimus technology, in recent versions of openSUSE. Situation There is a laptop with Optimus technology that uses a separate NVIDIA card and another integrated low power (usually Intel). You want to run programs using the independent card but you do not want to have it activated all the time to reduce the power consumption. You may also want to completely disable the independent card in laptops that do not offer this option in your BIOS. Procedure Preparation Although the process is generally reliable, problems may appear after the installation and configuration process. Since openSUSE 13.2 uses the default Btrfs file system for the root partition, it is convenient to create a snapshot to have it as a recovery point if necessary. To do this, the following command is executed in a console: snapper create -d BeforeTheBumblebee Be...

This page applies to computers that do not use NVIDIA's Optimus technology. To install the driver on these computers see the NVIDIA Optimus page NVIDIA drivers can not be directly integrated into openSUSE because of their license. Fortunately for the new users, NVIDIA and openSUSE facilitate the installation of these drivers: NVIDIA creates RPMs for openSUSE and puts them in a repository. When talking about cards of the series 6, 7 or 8, reference is made to the old 6xxx, 7xxx and 8xxx. For example, the GeForce 7600GT. For all recent cards (GTX 650, for example) the driver indicated by GeForce 8 and later must be installed. Also, keep in mind that the 8xxx series is older than the 400. The numbers or names of the models are not significant. Another important fact is that the same card model can be supported by several versions of the driver. The important thing is that the package that is installed supports at least the model of card for which you want to install. As of vers...