PRIMUSRUN(1)

💅 NAME 💅

ok so primusrun — she runs an application on a discrete NVIDIA video card ✨ like that's literally her whole job and she ate

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

primusrun command

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

ok bestie, here's the tea ☕ Primus implements low-overhead local-only client-side OpenGL offloading via GLX forking. That's the whole vibe. No cap.

It's currently intended to be used alongside Bumblebee, and it gives you a drop-in replacement for optirun — i.e. "primusrun". So if you already know optirun, you already know her. Slay 💅

✨ VARIABLES ✨

here's the list of environment variables that affect the primus library and might actually matter to you as an end user, bestie 🫶

• PRIMUS_SYNC — the readback-display synchronization method, default is 0
  • 0: no sync
  • 1: synced, display previous frame
  • 2: synced, display latest frame
• PRIMUS_VERBOSE — verbosity level, default is 1
  • 0: only errors
  • 1: warnings
  • 2: profiling
• PRIMUS_DISPLAY — the secondary Xorg server display number, default is :8

🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

ok these are the moments, the iconic little demos 💖

• primusrun glxgears -info

Runs the graphics demo supplied by mesa-utils to confirm whether the discrete card is being used for GL rendering. literally the vibe check for your GPU, no cap 👑

• PRIMUS_VERBOSE=2 primusrun glxgears

Runs the graphics demo supplied by mesa-utils with verbose output from primus. she's chatty and we love that for her 🗣️✨

• vblank_mode=0 primusrun glxgears

Disable vblank synchronisation, typically used for benchmarking purposes. unhinged frame rate, no brakes, we're so back 🔥

💀 ISSUES 💀

ok so this is the part where we have to be real with you bestie 😭

Since compositing hurts performance, invoking primus when a compositing WM is active is not recommended. like, please don't. I'm begging 🙈

If you need to use primus with compositing and you see flickering or bad performance, synchronizing primus' display thread with the application's rendering thread may help. here's the move:

PRIMUS_SYNC=1 primusrun ...

This makes primus display the previously rendered frame. Alternatively, with PRIMUS_SYNC=2 primus will display the latest rendered frame, trading frame rate for reduced visual latency. pick your fighter, bestie ⚔️

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Primus was created by Alexander Monakov <amonakov@gmail.com>. iconic behaviour fr fr 🫶

This manual page was written by Vincent Cheng <Vincentc1208@gmail.com>, for the Debian project (and may be used by others). thank you for your service, legend 💜

and that's the whole page babes — primusrun, from the General Commands Manual, February 2013, page PRIMUSRUN(1) 🎀 tysm for reading, go run something on your discrete card, mwah 💋