Back when I had an an "Optimus" laptop with that kind of setup, I had to use bumblebee/optirun/primus (I forget how the parts fit together) to launch programs that I wanted to use the dedicated card with.
It worked a little like Wine does, you'd just wrap your program invocation with `optirun <game>` and it would set everything up for you. IIRC it was also possible to combine this with wine, `optirun wine <game>`. The first year after I got the laptop (this was maybe 5-6 years back) support was kind of flaky, but things got smoothed out pretty quickly.
Eventually I would just launch Steam with optirun and any programs started by Steam would inherit the dedicated GPU settings.
I haven't used a setup like that for a few years now, I'm sure it's only gotten better since. The Arch wiki has a good rundown.
It worked a little like Wine does, you'd just wrap your program invocation with `optirun <game>` and it would set everything up for you. IIRC it was also possible to combine this with wine, `optirun wine <game>`. The first year after I got the laptop (this was maybe 5-6 years back) support was kind of flaky, but things got smoothed out pretty quickly.
Eventually I would just launch Steam with optirun and any programs started by Steam would inherit the dedicated GPU settings.
I haven't used a setup like that for a few years now, I'm sure it's only gotten better since. The Arch wiki has a good rundown.