Switcheroo Handle iGPU and dGPU Under Gnome

Many laptops come with an extra GPU. In the past it was difficult to setup your computer to use the dedicated (powerful) GPU (dGPU) for heavier workloads while it can use the integrated GPU (iGPU) for anything else. Once the switcheroo service was setup, I had nothing to do anymore but let it handle my GPUs. Prerequisites Switcheroo is a solution for GNOME only. Check which GPU is in use Use: glxinfo | grep "OpenGL renderer" to see what GPU is currently in use. The output on my machine was: OpenGL renderer string: AMD Radeon Graphics (...). Install (for example) Steam and navigate to “Help > System Information” to see which GPU is recognized. Without switcheroo, Steam recognized my Radeon iGPU. Start a graphics intensive game and see if it is lagging. It was in my case. ...

August 18, 2024 · 2 min

Gnome Bloatware Removal

When I set up a new laptop recently I went for Arch Linux with Gnome as desktop. After finishing the setup, I noticed that the default Gnome installation brings along more than I need. On the other hand, I performed my “post setup” installations to get my system ready for the daily developer’s work. This post deals with the packages I removed and the basic set of packages I installed for my dev environment. ...

November 29, 2023 · 2 min