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Csaba Toth
Asked: 2015-03-17 16:12:50 +0800 CST

DisplayLink USB monitor with Ubuntu 14.04 and nVidia GPU

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I figured even before reading http://plugable.com/2014/03/06/displaylink-usb-2-0-graphics-adapters-on-linux-2014-edition that DisplayLink won't work with proprietary nVidia driver. I also see that the USB monitor (and AOC) is activated while the machine is booting. As soon as the proprietary driver kicks in, it blanks out.

If I enable nouveau driver and reboot the machine, only the USB monitor shows the graphical display, and my notebook's monitor remains blank. When I look into Unity's standard "Displays" settings, only the AOC monitor is detected. (When I run proprietary nVidia driver, only the Built-in Display is detected). The color depth is very low though, but I wouldn't mind that too much as a secondary monitor. I know it's not for gaming or video.

Could anyone help with this? I'm running latest stock kernel of 64bit ubuntu: uname -a: Linux erebus 3.13.0-46-generic #79-Ubuntu SMP Tue Mar 10 20:06:50 UTC 2015 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

I can provide any other logs if needed, but I don't want to unnecessary clutter this post in advance. I hope someone else already got it working with this combination: Ubuntu 14.04 64 bit, nVidia GPU and DisplayLink monitor.

14.04

3 Answers

  1. I got this to work on my Laptop with Intel Graphics + Nvidia 870M by switching the GPU from Nvidia to Intel using Nvidia X Server Settings. I'm using the Nvidia proprietary driver 352.xx and the latest displaylink linux drivers from displaylink's website.

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  2. Best Answer

    Check what kind of DisplayLink monitor you have. In my case an AOC e2251fw, and it turned out that it uses DL-165 chipset, and for DL-1xx chips you won't need the EVGI driver + new DisplayLink driver. You can use the udl kernel driver and it even works along with the proprietary nvidia drivers.

    See more: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/DisplayLink and http://www.displaylink.org/forum/showthread.php?p=81545#post81545

    Still have some issues though: Giant virtual monitor with DispayLink monitor + Xfce with additional annoying scroll effect

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  3. My display-link on Ubuntu 16.04 only worked with nouveau and Unity (not xfce, gnome etc). With nvidia driver I couldn't even see the external displays/

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