Ubuntu 18.04 marked the transition to a new, more granular, packaging of the NVIDIA drivers, which, unfortunately, combined with a change in logind, and with the previous migration from Lightdm to Gdm3, caused (Intel+NVIDIA) hybrid laptops to stop working the way they used to in Ubuntu 16.xx and older.

The following are the main issues experienced by our users:

An increase in power consumption when using the power saving profile (i.e. when the discrete GPU is off).

The inability to switch between power profiles on log out (thus requiring a reboot).

We have backported a commit to solve the problem with logind, and I have worked on a few changes in gpu-manager, and in the other key components, to improve the experience when using Gdm3.

NOTE: fixes for Lightdm, and for SDDM still need some work, and will be made available in the next update.

Both issues should be fixed in Ubuntu 18.10, and I have backported my work to Ubuntu 18.04, which is now available for testing.

If you run Ubuntu 18.04, own a hybrid laptop with an Intel and an NVIDIA GPU (supported by the 390 NVIDIA driver), we would love to get your feedback on the updates in Ubuntu 18.04.

If you are interested, head over to the bug report, follow the instructions at the end of the bug description, and let us know about your experience.