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Final Edit : SOLVED!, I am an idiot! and when I have caught some Z's I will tell you how I fixed this and why I am an idiot.
[Solution]
The debian wiki mentions nothing about screen flickering, but the arch wiki page for bumblebee does so i first tried to follow those troubleshooting tips. Creating the file 20-intel.conf and placing it in /etc/bumblebee/xorg.conf.d broke things, so i commented the file rather than deleting it. The problem it caused was fixed but the screen still flickered.
Then I wondered why the file did not exist allready, and this was because for some strange reason the package xserver-xorg-video-intel had NOT automatically been installed, even though its counterpart xserver-xorg-video-nvidia was during the bumblebee installation. Simply installing video-intel and leaving the 20-intel.conf file commented out fixed screen flickering. Yeah I know, major fail on my part :D
The original issue below was caused by me not fully understanding the documentation the first time round and making a complete hash of things.
Second Issue - screen flickering
New Edit : Being a stubborn asshole I decided to continue trying to figure this out. After so much hacking of my install I decided to start over by re-installing.
This time after doing things differently the only issue I now have is screen flickering in X. If the cursor is focused on an X window the flickering/tearing is random. However there is NO flickering/tearing if the cursor is resting on the i3 status bar.
Original content, no longer relevant to current issue.
So yesterday i tried to install X and bumblebee on sid, but without a lot of the unneeded packages from a regular apt-get install xorg.
The following command is what i used :
apt-get install --no-install-recommends xinit xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse xfonts-base bumblebee-nvidia primus
APT appeared to install the X packages without error, but when it tried to install bumblebee several screens of information similar to the one shown in this image appeared : https://www.dropbox.com/s/o3lk779ns4u3g ... 5.jpg?dl=0
With keyboard input not working i hard reset the machine. When i rebooted apt told me to run
dpkg --configure -a
The result of running that was the image shown above. Can anyone help me figure out what has happened and how to fix it? So far google has returned results for ubuntu and other distros that are a few years out of date.
* Be fat, be as fat as you fucking please, just don't sit next to me on an aeroplane.
* "The sun never sets on the British Empire...." "Yeah, well, the sun never sets on my asshole!!"
* I am an "old skool" administrator who has been managing UNIX and Linux systems since the early 80s <-- big fkin lol
"There have been times throughout American history where what is right is not the same as what is legal. Sometimes to do the right thing you have to break the law." - Edward Snowden
Yes, my first post clearly shows I included bumblebee-nvidia and primus in the apt-get.
* Be fat, be as fat as you fucking please, just don't sit next to me on an aeroplane.
* "The sun never sets on the British Empire...." "Yeah, well, the sun never sets on my asshole!!"
* I am an "old skool" administrator who has been managing UNIX and Linux systems since the early 80s <-- big fkin lol
"There have been times throughout American history where what is right is not the same as what is legal. Sometimes to do the right thing you have to break the law." - Edward Snowden
Couple of things. It looks like in your first post that you install xinit, the intel video driver, some input drivers, fonts, and bumblebee. I don't see where you install the X server. I know you don't want the entire xorg package, but you need the server. Maybe xserver-xorg-core would be enough (note that the "xserver-xorg" package does not include the X server, but "xserver-xorg-core" does.)
I don't think you need -input-kbd and -input-mouse. You do need xserver-xorg-input-evdev.
You are seeing a kernel panic. I'm not sure why installing bumblebee would cause a kernel panic. This happened during the install, not when you tried to "startx"?
IMO, bumblebee introduces enough complexity to your install that I would just go with the xorg package (look at its depends, it's not that bad, and it pulls in some utilities you will want anyway). Once you get bumblebee working, you can try removing some of the packages you don't need.
I copied the apt-get line straight from my notes i made earlier, i did install xserver-xorg-core and input-evdev later (just forgot to update my notes :D)
Presently I have a working desktop : https://www.dropbox.com/s/a72r63h0r0e6k ... 9.jpg?dl=0
Im using xserver-xorg-video-intel and i3. I wanted to get a working graphical environment before trying to configure bumblebee to use the secondary nvidia chip.
* Be fat, be as fat as you fucking please, just don't sit next to me on an aeroplane.
* "The sun never sets on the British Empire...." "Yeah, well, the sun never sets on my asshole!!"
* I am an "old skool" administrator who has been managing UNIX and Linux systems since the early 80s <-- big fkin lol
^ Well, that's progress! And one step at a time is always a good way to troubleshoot.
Do you still get the kernel panic when you try to install bumblebee-nvdia and primus?
I am afraid you have once again reached the limits of my knowledge -- I know nothing about bumblebee. I am sure you will eventually get it working. And then you can write a how-to topic :)
If I get this to work I will cobble together my various notes into something that is hopefully sensible to normal folks.
* Be fat, be as fat as you fucking please, just don't sit next to me on an aeroplane.
* "The sun never sets on the British Empire...." "Yeah, well, the sun never sets on my asshole!!"
* I am an "old skool" administrator who has been managing UNIX and Linux systems since the early 80s <-- big fkin lol
Being a stubborn asshole I decided to continue trying to figure this out. After so much hacking of my install I decided to start over by re-installing.
This time after doing things differently the only issue I now have is screen flickering in X.
I will try to give details of what I did differently, but first I must order the notes into the order in which I did things this time.
If the cursor is focused on an X window the flickering/tearing is random. However there is NO flickering/tearing if the cursor is resting on the i3 status bar.
* Be fat, be as fat as you fucking please, just don't sit next to me on an aeroplane.
* "The sun never sets on the British Empire...." "Yeah, well, the sun never sets on my asshole!!"
* I am an "old skool" administrator who has been managing UNIX and Linux systems since the early 80s <-- big fkin lol
Baconface, first i tried with just compton &
It made the fonts and icons in programs "appear" sharper. No transparency however.
Then i tried with compton -bcCGf -i 0.8 -e 0.8 --no-fading-openclose --sw-opti &
This time there is tearing when scrolling down web pages in Iceweasel, but i get nice transparency in the URL bar of my browser when typing new URL.
Is it supposed to do more than this?
* Be fat, be as fat as you fucking please, just don't sit next to me on an aeroplane.
* "The sun never sets on the British Empire...." "Yeah, well, the sun never sets on my asshole!!"
* I am an "old skool" administrator who has been managing UNIX and Linux systems since the early 80s <-- big fkin lol
You can set a .compton.conf, or set most stuff like what you have there. Personally, I have a .conf, with most of those options, but you can also set rules too; like I want transparency except on [...], or I want shadows, except on [...]
From the man page; although sadly, I knew most of these offhand.
b=background process
c=shadows (default is -15 I think)
C=no shadows on docks
G=no shadows on drag/drop windows
f=fading (negated with the --no-fading-openclose)
i=inactive opacity
e=active opacity
swi=performace switch
compton has actually just made things worse, before i had no tearing but now i do have tearing with it. If after playing around i cannot get it to work it will be purged.
* Be fat, be as fat as you fucking please, just don't sit next to me on an aeroplane.
* "The sun never sets on the British Empire...." "Yeah, well, the sun never sets on my asshole!!"
* I am an "old skool" administrator who has been managing UNIX and Linux systems since the early 80s <-- big fkin lol
I put the compton line in ~/.xinitrc and the tearing is fixed.
* Be fat, be as fat as you fucking please, just don't sit next to me on an aeroplane.
* "The sun never sets on the British Empire...." "Yeah, well, the sun never sets on my asshole!!"
* I am an "old skool" administrator who has been managing UNIX and Linux systems since the early 80s <-- big fkin lol