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Thomas Venturini
Asked: 2018-11-14 08:47:23 +0800 CST

Ubuntu 18.04 DisplayLink high cpu usage

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I recently upgraded to Ubuntu 18.04 and now my multi-monitor setup with DisplayLink is no longer working properly.

CPU usage is almost at 100% all the time where DisplayLinkManager is using about 80% of it.

Did some one managed to setup DisplayLink on Ubuntu 18.04 and got it working smooth? I would love to play videos on the second screen like I could before.

I am using a Zenbook ux31a.

displaylink 18.04

2 Answers

  1. If you have any peripherals plugged into the dock like say a usb mouse, move your mouse around really fast while watching the process. It will jump from 20% to 150% cpu. Anything plugged into the dock seems to lag the cpu depending on usage. I switched to an older dock that your laptop snaps into and no issues. But if your dock is using usb3, your peripherals are going to blow up your cpu.. especially the mouse while it is in use.

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  2. I run mine on a Zenbook UX330ua running 18.04. Make sure you have the most recent drivers (https://www.displaylink.com/downloads/ubuntu). To be honest though, while the newest drivers do help decrease the CPU usage, it will still occasionally go really high and my computer will stop responding entirely.

    If the computer still somewhat responds, you can kill displaylink and let it restart. I added this to my ~/.bashrc to do it in one command: 

    alias stopdisplaylink="sudo kill -9 $(ps -A | grep -i displaylink | awk '{print $1}')"

    FWIW, DisplayLink also has some troubleshooting posts... but none of them have fixed my issues so far: https://support.displaylink.com/knowledgebase/topics/103927-troubleshooting-ubuntu

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