I have upgraded an Ubuntu laptop over a few years and every upgrade it broke, requiring some new incantation to fix it the next time. I don't think it's considered the future?
I believe the future is called "Prime Synchronisation", announced a few years ago. Good luck getting it to work though: https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/957814/prime-and-pr... I gave up after a while.
We're probably nearing the time when I'll give all the methods another go, but currently I'm back into the "change setting and log out + in" camp.
As an aside, bumblebee also seems to break my i3 environment... I get hangs & magic sysreq won't recover. I've had to go back to the default DE.
Very slightly, but you're better off getting a notebook that actually has FOSS graphics drivers, for a much more stable and reliable experience.
It's unfortunate that you can't upgrade the XPS15 to the 4K display or a quad-core processor without getting the nVidia graphics along with it. IIRC, some previous models included 4K configurations without that.
I had lots of annoyance with a previous Optimus based notebook. How has the situation of bumblebee and primusrun and dualbooting improved in the past two years?