I am doing some testing to see if my laptop MSI ge620 supports Centos 6.
Everything works out of the box, except for the videocard i have to install bumblebee, because it's a hybrid videocard. And the lifetime of my battery decreases to 1,5 hours instead of 5 with windows 7.

I looked at the following howto:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Bumblebee

to see if i can get it to work, first problem was the autoconf version, which i changed in the makefile.
But then it wants libbsd, i have searched all yum repos, but i can't find it.

Who has any experience with bumblebee and centos 6 and can share his experience?

Thanks in advance.

You could try to rebuild the Fedora 16 SRPM libbsd-0.2.0-4.fc15.src.rpm.

I haven't thought about that. I will do that. If it all works, i can build a bumblebee rpm.

Please update the thread with your progress. If it works others will be interested.

I installed bumblebee.

First i edited the makefile autoconfig on centos 6 is 2.63
Install the kernel-devel package
Install automake
Install dkms from epel.

The rebuild of the libbsd package was the right solution, install them both.

I installed bumblebee, and copied over the bumblebee sysvinit script.
I then used the bbswitch installation option with dkms from this guide:

http://duxyng.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/finally-working-nvidia-optimus-on-fedora-16/

The laptop lifetime is extended to 2,30 hours, which is a lot better.

But i will have to test further.

Excellent news. Please keep us posted if anything changes.

If feeling adventurous it would be interesting to see how it plays with ELRepo kmod-nvidia rather than dkms.

I will keep the thread updated. I installed centos on a external usb hard drive, so that i can test easily.
I will have a look at the ELrepo repo.

To bad the hardware suppliers don't write drivers about the hybrid cards.

Thanks. As you have demonstrated that it works, perhaps an ELRepo RFE would be appropriate. As you seem to be comfortable building packages, you might even want to volunteer to help.

If i read the documentation, the kmod-nvidia can replace bbswitch?

No, I don't think so, but it might replace akmod-nvidia, and it might be possible to replace bbswitch with a kmod and not require dkms.

I see it now. I need to do some tweaking on the configuration of bbswitch.

https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/bbswitch

I need to test:

load_state
unload_state

And create a config file in /etc/modprobe.d


On my test system i have a external usb drive on which centos is installed, so it has 2 drives, i will leave the usb drive plugged in, when i boot up windows 7.

I installed the kmod-nvidia package.
Configured bumblebee and run glxgears and optirun glxgears, everything works wel.

I also did a glxgears -info and optirun glxgears -info, to see if i am using the nvidia card, and with the kmod-nvidia installed i see nvidia instead of software rastersizer

Except when i reboot, it want's to load the nvidia module and then it say's no such device.

It looks like bumblebee completely disables the card. Have to dig a little bit further.

kmod-nvidia doesn't work together with bumblebee. I tried all kinds of configuration settings.
I now have 2,5 hours of battery time with bumblebee, but that's only when the laptop is not under stress. When i put some load on it, the battery goes empty very quickly.

THe hybrid cards are still a problem in combination with linux.

At least you got it to work. Best success I've seen to date.

I am browsing for an hour now, to look for a solution to package a app, thatś only in .deb format. My battery status changed from 25% back to 59%. Before the reboot i only had 25%.
I removed the virtualgl package.

I would really like to have a RHEL 6 klone running stable on my laptop. I want a stable laptop, i am not looking for a linux distro i have to do extensive upgrading, like ubuntu and fedora.

I will do some extensive tests the next couple of days.

I got kmod-nvidia working now.
I forgot to remove /etc/X11/xorg.conf

After a reboot everything works now.

Have to do some more testing.

Thanks for the report. Standing by for more.

I have a first version of the bumblebee rpm ready. I am now going to create the bbswitch rpm.
Can i send the bumblebee rpm to elrepo team, so they can test it, verify it?

Just finished the bbswitch rpm.
All looks good, i tested it on my laptop. Maybe the rpm's need some tweaking, because it's allways good to let someone else have a look.

I will contact the elrepo team to upload the rpm's.

Best way to do that is probably to open a RFE in the bug tracker.