Do you still remember my Lenovo W500 notebook? I was writing about the setup and the issue with the switchable graphic cards. You remember: It got two cards – one for the hard work and one for saving power. Switching only worked via BIOS or using Windows.

Honestly, I wouldn’t care about that switching issue too much if the inactive card wouldn’t run at 100% eating power for doing nothing except for being idle.

The good news now: The current release candidate of the kernel (2.6.34-rc6) now got a basic implementation of the VGA Switcheroo work, which is about my issue. The functionality currently can be explored via DebugFS. I didn’t see anything at the userspace right now, but at least switching active cards and sending the inactive one to sleep works via textconsole.

For me, that’s great news as I can save some more power extending the battery time of my book for quite some time. Be assured – I’m staying tuned for any progress with that topic.