Nvidia Optimus tear free test

PPA description

The purpose here is to test whether adding a tearfree line to xorg.conf is effective in reducing tearing on nvidia optimus gpu's when using the nvidia drivers.
This is done thru adding a TearFree option to xorg.conf for the Intel device when xorg.conf is generated or regenerated by gpu-manager

** Here it has no effect on a standard 14.04.1 install with non lts HWE mesa stack. Tear Free is enabled, then immediately disabled, seen clearly in /var/log/Xorg.0.log. Works fine with 14.04.1 upgraded to the vivid HWE lts stack, 14.04.3, 15.04 & 15.10 **

** Also note that this does introduce some minor tearing while moving cursor inside a video window, for me small price to be paid **

Tested here with a nvidia GeForce GT 755M in an ubuntu session & this ppa's nvidia drivers, both 340, 355 & 358. 355/358 seemed best
*Trusty users should probably use drivers from below ppa*, for vivid, wily doesn't hurt either, 355 or higher beats the 352 drivers

https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers/+archive/ubuntu/ppa

To try, *assumes already using nvidia-prime* -

Upgrade to the ppa's ubuntu-drivers-common package

If currently on Nvidia -
open nvidia settings, switch to Intel, log out/in
open nvidia settings, switch to nvidia, log out/in
See how it goes

If currently on Intel -
open nvidia settings, switch to nvidia, log out/in
See how it goes

To ck. - open /etc/X11/xorg.conf, you should see this line in intel device section, Option "TearFree" "True"
example here of complete section

Section "Device"
    Identifier "intel"
    Driver "intel"
    BusID "PCI:0@0:2:0"
    Option "AccelMethod" "SNA"
    Option "TearFree" "True"
EndSection

To add this ppa -
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mc3man/tearfree-test
sudo apt-get update

To remove this ppa & revert back -
Install ppa-purge
sudo ppa-purge ppa:mc3man/tearfree-test

Note: PRIME Synchronization will be working in 16.04.3, instructions here
https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2365449

Adding this PPA to your system

You can update your system with unsupported packages from this untrusted PPA by adding ppa:mc3man/tearfree-test to your system's Software Sources. (Read about installing)

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mc3man/tearfree-test
sudo apt-get update
        
Technical details about this PPA

This PPA can be added to your system manually by copying the lines below and adding them to your system's software sources.

Display sources.list entries for:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/mc3man/tearfree-test/ubuntu YOUR_UBUNTU_VERSION_HERE main 
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/mc3man/tearfree-test/ubuntu YOUR_UBUNTU_VERSION_HERE main 
Signing key:
1024R/8E51A6D660CD88D67D65221D90BD7EACED8E640A (What is this?)
Fingerprint:
8E51A6D660CD88D67D65221D90BD7EACED8E640A

For questions and bugs with software in this PPA please contact Doug McMahon.

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Overview of published packages

12 of 2 results
Package Version Uploaded by
ubuntu-drivers-common 1:0.4.5.1 Doug McMahon (2015-09-04)
ubuntu-drivers-common 1:0.2.91.11.1 (Newer version available) Doug McMahon (2015-09-04)
12 of 2 results

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