Greetzorz!

I'm buying a new laptop that I'll be using exclusively for linux. Now normally this demands that I write down a list of hardware specs and other requirements that I would like the hardware to meet. But recently I had the privilege to notice that a lot of laptops today come with dual graphics cards i.e. an Intel HD Graphics and another like GeForce/Radeon mobile. This configuration is normally called switchable graphics. Now since I'm planning to get a laptop with a better GFX card (AMD/nVidia) that I'll be using for various stuff like OpenCL, cuda and the like, I'd like to know how these things are supported in todays mainline linux kernel. What's the 2017 version of this answer?

• What's the current support status of the drivers for devices with switchable graphics?
• Should I opt for a device with two GFX cards (switchable graphics) or find a laptop with a single GFX card (classic configuration)?
• Which GFX vendor should I go for, if I want to use GFX processing like OpenCL?

Thanks in advance!

Sincerely,
~displace

AFAIK, amd & nvidia support it. There's something called vga-switcheroo in the kernel.

I currently run Arch Linux on an Asus G751-JM, it has both Intel graphics on an i7-4710HQ and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 860M. It seems to work well. I play Steam games without issues

Do they like autoswitch or do you have to switch them manually?

I use Bumblebee to get it working. So I start Steam from the command line via