Where Things Stand with DisplayLink and Lion

[cshbell]

I’ve been checking here periodically to see if there will be an overview update from DisplayLink on where things stand with Mac OS X Lion compatibility. As nearly as I can tell, both from my own use and from reading posts on these forums, here’s where things stand:

• Installing the DisplayLink 1.7b2 and 1.7b3 drivers can cause Lion to fail to show the contents of the login screen, Finder windows, and other parts of the UI.
• On Macs with a discreet GPU, setting the Energy Saver preferences for Graphics to 'Higher performance' (thereby enabling the discreet GPU) fixes the login screen and Finder windows issue.
• Even when the DisplayLink drivers work, acceleration is lacking, and graphics on the DisplayLink monitor display very slowly.

If any of these points are incorrect, please correct me.

Questions that still remain:

1. One of the DisplayLink engineers who’s been in this forum has made mention of the fact that there is a bug in Lion that is affecting the DisplayLink drivers and that "only Apple" can change these. Is that still the case?
2. If so, what is the bug, specifically? Is the problem with the WindowServer process?
3. For those of us with Apple Developer accounts, is there a tracking number in Bug Reporter that we can reference and track?
4. Perhaps most importantly: Does DisplayLink believe that these issues can be fixed, or have architectural changes in Lion broken the mechanisms by which the DisplayLink drivers work?

Hope to see these issues resolved soon.

[scott1588]

You forgot to mention the drag and no drop issue.

[ChristianP]

Originally Posted by cshbell

I’ve been checking here periodically to see if there will be an overview update from DisplayLink on where things stand with Mac OS X Lion compatibility. As nearly as I can tell, both from my own use and from reading posts on these forums, here’s where things stand:

• Installing the DisplayLink 1.7b2 and 1.7b3 drivers can cause Lion to fail to show the contents of the login screen, Finder windows, and other parts of the UI.
• On Macs with a discreet GPU, setting the Energy Saver preferences for Graphics to 'Higher performance' (thereby enabling the discreet GPU) fixes the login screen and Finder windows issue.
• Even when the DisplayLink drivers work, acceleration is lacking, and graphics on the DisplayLink monitor display very slowly.

If any of these points are incorrect, please correct me.


Questions that still remain:

1. One of the DisplayLink engineers who’s been in this forum has made mention of the fact that there is a bug in Lion that is affecting the DisplayLink drivers and that "only Apple" can change these. Is that still the case?
   
2. If so, what is the bug, specifically? Is the problem with the WindowServer process?
   
   
   
3. For those of us with Apple Developer accounts, is there a tracking number in Bug Reporter that we can reference and track?
   
4. Perhaps most importantly: Does DisplayLink believe that these issues can be fixed, or have architectural changes in Lion broken the mechanisms by which the DisplayLink drivers work?
   
   
   

Hope to see these issues resolved soon.

Here's answer to your questions:
1.Yes these bugs (including the drag and no drop issue and excluding the performance issue) are specific for model with nVidia 9400 chipset and are caused by an Apple bug.
2.Most likely the issue is on the WindowServer process. It could also be partially on the nVidia driver side.
3. We have 2 open bugs (9752510 and 9799620) on these topics, but these bugs are classified as duplicate of an Apple internal bug, which developers can't track.
4. Since these bugs are specific to a specific chipset, they are not due to architectural changes, so I'm pretty sure that can be fixed.
On our side, we will try to address performance issues.

[cshbell]

ChristianP: Thanks for the follow-up. I wasn’t aware the problems were isolated to NVIDIA 9400 chips. I’ll look forward to using DisplayLink products with future Macs.