[OpenIndiana-discuss] NVIDIA Optimus compatibility?

[Enrico]

Hello,
i'm considering buying a laptop with NVIDIA gpu since is the only
officially supported on Openindiana.

I've found many laptops that would be great for me (price under 900€, hd
display, i3 intel proc.) but all of them have NVIDIA Optimus technology
that can control the power consumption on Windows enabling the nvidia gpu
only when needed.

I would like to know if anyone have tried this kind of laptops with OI or
knows a laptop with the same specs/price but without nvidia optimus
technology.

On linux many reported that the system default gpu is the one from Intel,
so the kernel uses it as the default even if the nvidia gpu is listed with
lspci.

Since these laptop have not an hardware switch/bios option and Nvidia plan
is to not support this technology, on linux the nvidia card is left
completely untouched and you can use it only with some 'unstable'
workarounds to apply on the kernel and on userspace software.
(http://www.martin-juhl.dk/) This is not the same as an 'hybrid' gpu
laptops.

I think the intel and nvidia gpu share the same system bus and migrate the
graphic memory data when the system needs to switch from one to another. I
could be possible in a relatively close future to port those workarounds
on openindiana/illumos world or simply disable the intel gpu?