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I installed fresh ubuntu 18.04. I got two nvidia gpus on my machine. I installed nvidia drivers for them. And after installation I checked if drivers are installed properly by using nvidia-smi. And got a list of processes which are gnome-shell and xorg/Xorg. These occupy gpus unnecessarily (500MB) because I linked my monitor to iGPU. How can I get rid of these processes? :

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                       GPU Memory |
|  GPU       PID   Type   Process name                             Usage      |
|=============================================================================|
|    0      1067      G   /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg                            47MiB |
|    0      1165      G   /usr/bin/gnome-shell                          51MiB |
|    0      1409      G   /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg                           191MiB |
|    0      1593      G   /usr/bin/gnome-shell                         168MiB |

Thank you in advance.

Kadir Gunel
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  • You can not, if you want to keep using 18.04 with Gnome3 DE. – mikewhatever May 25 '18 at 14:47
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    It's not clear what you're trying to accomplish here. If you have 2 Nvidia cards installed in your computer, why don't you want to use them? Why do you use the Intel GPU and not the Nvidia cards? Perhaps you could just remove them if they're not needed? – Delorean May 25 '18 at 15:46
  • Close voters. Answered. – Elder Geek May 25 '18 at 16:37
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    @Dorian I simply asked why it is using nvidia cards even though I set iGPU as default. It doesn't matter I have 2 or infinite number of resources. I just asked why and is there any solution to fix this. – Kadir Gunel May 25 '18 at 21:48
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    @Elder Geek I understand your sarcasm. But don't you need to ask as a +30 year IT professional, as its written in your profile, why is this situation happening ? Why +500MB of resources are going for nothing? And what would be the real fix instead of giving, you know,dump alternatives. Don't judge people with their reputations guys! If you don't know the real reason don't try to be sound clever or fancy. B.R. – Kadir Gunel May 25 '18 at 21:48
  • @KadirGunel I'm sorry if you perceived my answer as sarcasm. I was si9mply stating facts. I provided not one but 2 real fixes. A third would be to run without a GUI at all. If I was judging you on your reputation I would have simply VTC this post as unclear along with everyone else. The level of detail you seem to be expecting in an answer far exceeds the level of detail in your question. As far as I can tell, no one here has access to the source for Nvidia drivers. I apologize for being eager to help – Elder Geek May 26 '18 at 11:15
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    I think this is a legit question and I think it is very clear what OP is asking. Closing the question seems odd to me. I came across this issue because I am noticing the same thing. Ubuntu 16 did consume around 200MB of GPU RAM, With 18.06 it's over 400 MB. – Stefan Falk Nov 17 '19 at 14:15
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    There are many uses of GPUs other than graphics, as the main reason for using them nowadays is machine learning. So for instance it would be nice to be able to save the GPU memory for pytorch and have gnome use the intel chipset. Just saying. – Lud Sep 07 '20 at 15:02

1 Answers1

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As Dorian points out in this comment The easiest most effective way that I know of to stop hardware from using resources is to remove it. (This approach has worked for over 30 years and continues to work today).

One alternative that would result in less GPU resource usage that wouldn't require removing your graphics cards would be to choose a lighter weight DE (Desktop Environment) such as LXDE or XFCE. The former is the default DE supplied with Lubuntu and the latter the default DE supplied with Xubuntu.

While it's possible to remove and add Desktop Environments at will, as the saying goes, "If it breaks, you have the pieces" and I don't recommend that course of action for anyone seeking an answer to this question.

It's far safer to backup your critical data and install a lighter version from scratch, restoring your data upon completion of installation. When changing distributions I would personally restrict what I was backing up to my personal files and scripts and just reinstall programs as needed.

If you are interested in opinions, here's a review of Linux Desktop Environments which includes pros and cons mentioned by those that expressed an opinion.

Elder Geek
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