Bumblebee Intel+Nvidia on 15.10 blackscreen issue

As you have quite new GPU hardware you should use new NVIDIA drivers and software as well.

Replace bumblebee with nvidia-prime to switch between integrated and dedicated graphics.

Reinstall the NVIDIA drivers, but first uninstall all NVIDIA software and remove the bumblebee.

Open a terminal and execute:

sudo apt-get purge nvidia* '^bumblebee.*'  
sudo reboot  

When the GRUB boot menu appears : Highlight the Ubuntu menu entry and press the E key.
Add the nouveau.modeset=0 parameter to the end of the Linux line ... Then press F10 to boot.

Install the stable NVIDIA proprietary drivers from the Ubuntu repositories (does not apply to ubuntu 12.04:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-352 nvidia-prime
sudo reboot

When you want to use the latest drivers - install them from the Proprietary GPU drivers PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-355 nvidia-prime
sudo reboot  

Although everything seemed to work, trying the following shows the bbswitch cannot turn off the nvidia card properly:

cat /proc/acpi/bbswitch
primusrun glxinfo|grep OpenGL
sleep 1
cat /proc/acpi/bbswitch

Then I reinstalled bumblebee-nvidia, it worked UNTIL I restart the system. After digging some more about the problem, I noticed that update-alternatives are updated after restarting the system and I noticed that gpu-manager is causing that. (simply run "sudo gpu-manager" and you'll see it is updated)

gpu-manager runs after you start lightdm. so, as a quick workaround, I disabled it.

now everything works as expected. after running something with optirun or primusrun, bbswitch turns nvidia off properly when the process exits.

To sum up, here is my summary to install everything from scratch (run it manually by reading the comments):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get purge -y nvidia* bumblebee bumblebee-nvidia bbswitch-dkms primus
sudo apt-get install nvidia-355

#switch to intel
sudo tee /etc/prime-discrete <<< off

#reboot is recommended at this point

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

#sudo gedit /etc/modules
#  add the line "bbswitch load_state=0"

#sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/bumblebee.conf
#and make sure the following line exists
#  blacklist nvidia-355

#sudo gedit /etc/bumblebee/bumblebee.conf
#  change line 22 "Driver=" to "Driver=nvidia"
#  change all nvidia-current to nvidia-355

#sudo gedit /etc/bumblebee/xorg.conf.nvidia
#  uncomment BusID line if it is commented and make sure it corresponds to the correct BusID

#disable gpu-manager as it changes i386-linux-gnu_gl_conf and x86_64-linux-gnu_gl_conf
sudo systemctl mask gpu-manager.service

EDIT: I removed rc.local modifications because gpu-manager was running not only at runtime but also while using the system. Therefore I disabled it completely.


Managed to get bumblebee to work in Wily after way too much unnecessary headaches, without that nvidia-prime horribleness.

As others suspected, it's because of gpu-manager. Whatever that is, it is barfing all over the update-alternative configuration. Masking that service and reinstalling bumblebee[-nvidia] fixes all problems, now the card turns on and off via optirun as expected, and no more black screens at boot.

sudo systemctl mask gpu-manager.service
sudo apt-get install --reinstall bumblebee bumblebee-nvidia

Also make sure there's no broken /etc/X11/xorg.conf left behind.