Bumblebee 3.2 comes with the following changes:

• new option: “-b” to disable injection of any render offloading bridge (primus or VirtualGL). Use this to invoke nvidia-settings (optirun -b none nvidia-settings -c :8);
• new option: “–no-xorg” for optirun to disable starting secondary X server. Use this to run CUDA or OpenCL applications that do not need the graphics rendering capabilities. Implies “-b none”;
• Bumblebee no longer depends on the primusrun script anymore for the Primus backend. However, “primusrun” and “optirun -b primus” have different behaviors: the first one powers on the discrete GPU when needed while the second one will immediately do this; the difference in behavior is most noticeable with WebGL content in Firefox;
• Added support for passing -configdir to X, defaulting to /etc/bumblebee/xorg.conf.d, –xconfdir option added to bumblebeed and XorgConfDir added to bumblebee.conf; this finally fixes a long-standing annoyance with SNA config option for the Intel driver;
• the BusID is added automatically on Ubuntu 13.04 so users no longer need to do this manually. Without this, Bumblebee failed to work on Ubuntu 13.04;
• fix: added /usr/$ LIB/mesa/libGL.so.1 to default primus libGLd for supporting Ubuntu 13.04;
• fix: fixed a “buffer overflow” issue in bumblebeed;
• fix: removed accesses to PCI config space from the daemon process.

Install Bumblebee Configurator GUI in Ubuntu

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:alessandrofac93/bumblebee-config-gtk-dev
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install bumblebee-config-gtk

Install Bumblebee in Ubuntu

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

To use the new Primus backend, you’ll also have to install Primus:

sudo apt-get install primus

On 64bit, also install primus-libs-ia32:

sudo apt-get install primus-libs-ia32

gksu gksu gedit /etc/bumblebee/bumblebee.conf

And in this file, change:

• “Driver” to “Driver=nvidia”
• “KernelDriver” to “KernelDriver=nvidia-VERSION” (e.g.: “nvidia-304)
• “LibraryPath” to “LibraryPath=/usr/lib/nvidia-VERSION:/usr/lib32/nvidia-VERSION” (e.g.: “LibraryPath=/usr/lib/nvidia-304:/usr/lib32/nvidia-304″)
• “XorgModulePath” to “XorgModulePath=/usr/lib/nvidia-VERSION/xorg,/usr/lib/xorg/modules” (e.g.: “XorgModulePath=/usr/lib/nvidia-304/xorg,/usr/lib/xorg/modules”)

Report any Bumblebee issues you may find @ GitHub.

For Debian, Arch Linux, Gentoo or Mandriva, see the Installing Bumblebee page.

Using Bumblebee

optirun APP-EXECUTABLE

replacing “APP-EXECUTABLE” with the application (or game) executable.

optirun -b primus APP-EXECUTABLE

This will immediately turn on the dedicated GPU.

Or:

primusrun APP-EXECUTABLE

This will only power the discrete GPU on when needed.

Web Upd8 – Ubuntu / Linux blog