[Nix-dev] Experiences with Nvidia Optimus?

[Arie Middelkoop]

Hi Mathijs,

Thanks for your reply. It resolved my confusion somewhat :)

>> Although it is likely a separate issue, when using the intel driver, all KDE
>> popdown menus have a graphical corruption (e.g. fully black), whereas e.g.
>> popup menus in Chrome do not have any corruption. But this is an incentive
>> to me to put in some effort to get it up and running properly :)
>
> Yes, that issue is fixed in intel 2.15, patch here
> https://github.com/bluescreen303/nixpkgs/commit/a0f72db5786f9272735c5a797c4a1fb878de2587
> I know 2.17 is available in nix repo, but it didn't compile (missing
> deps). Officially 2.15+ should need newer xorg-server/mesa libs, but I
> don't have issues.

Version 2.15 is now apparently committed in nixpkgs. It solves the 
graphical corruptions indeed, although hardware acceleration even with 
only the intel driver does not seem to work yet ("aiglx error: calling 
driver entry point failed"). In fact, once in a while it does not notice 
that it fails and locks up the X server.

Maybe at some point I'll switch to more recent X server packages. I 
already did some preliminary testing with that a couple of days ago, but 
after that I cannot use most of the prebuild graphical packages anymore, 
so I'll only do that once I'm totally happy with my system configuration 
and can wait a full day for it to build everything.

Conclusion for now: don't buy too new hardware in combination with linux...

Arie