USB 3.0 Displaylink DL-3000 series: DL-3100 / DL-3500 / DL-3900

[Dan]

Originally Posted by rektide

Your USB2.0 technology it already works perfectly in many multi-seat uses, thank you very much. There's no need to improve it for many people, and it's mudslinging to tell us to work your product harder when it already does work and is enjoyed.

Thanks rektide - we have worked closely with Userful and Plugable for example to help multiseat USB work well on linux. As you say USB 2.0 provides a pretty good solution here.

Sorry if you took my remark to be mudslinging.

Originally Posted by rektide

That said, huge amounts of work have been poured into very modern reworks, namely systemd's multiseat configuration. If that doesnt incentivize you, motivate you, I have no hope anything will. Your post seems to confirm that I ought not have any hope for DisplayLink caring about Linux or open source, and you seem unaware of the work that is being invested.

You are right on the ball - multiseat on Linux is much better than the Microsoft solution.

My comments were about hotpluggable multiscreen support on Linux being a bit poor.

Originally Posted by rektide

Good luck to you. I- we all here- wish you cared, wish we could use your products, in a massive way no one else ever will have interest in, but you've said you don't care about us, and won't do anything to help us.
----


DisplayLink:

Well life is complicated. We worked very hard with the USB-IF to produce the USB A/V spec, but that wasn't finished until after we'd made the USB 3.0 chip. We hope to support it with a FW update at some point in the future, but it's very hard to know when currently.

It has long been a desire to enable our ASIC designers to use the technology they are developing to have multiple USB screens on their linux desktops! Unfortunately we're not quite there yet.

I can understand your frustration.

[Dan]

Originally Posted by khamer

What product would you recommend? I see that you list these products as certified, and note that none of the DL-3xxx products will work with Macs either. It also looks like both the dual monitor devices are USB 3.0 based. Are there any certified dual monitor DL-2xxx products? Any non-certified dual monitor DL-2xxx products that you're aware of?

Would DL-2xxx adapters work connected to a USB 3.0 hub - as in, for the time being, could I use any USB 3.0 hub (such as the Lenovo dock) with a DL-2xxx based adapter that supports dual monitors or (worse) two DL-2xxx adapters with one monitor each?

I'm still all for finding a way to get support for DL-3xxx for linux, but I'd certainly be happier if there's a recommended way for linux to have two external displaylink monitors off one of USB port right now.

You can plug in as many DL-1x5 adapters as will fit on the bus (in fact we've had some embedded customers using linux plug in very large numbers). However, you may have to be creative to get hotplugging screens useful on linux (other than for multiseat).

If you check the other forums here, you'll see we've just released Alpha Mac drivers for DL-3xxx.

You can of course plug USB 2.0 devices into a USB 3.0 hub, but you won't see any performance increase.

[JordanGrant]

I also have a Thinkpad, in part because of it's Linux support. Bought a ThinkPad USB 3.0 Dock to support my peripherals at the office and am disappointed to find that it doesn't support my external monitor with built-in speakers. Does support external keyboard, mouse, gigabit network, etc.
Please make Linux support a priority.

[JordanGrant]

Originally Posted by khamer

I'd also immediately benefit from this.

Lenovo is pushing the USB 3.0 ThinkPad dock, and ThinkPads are generally known for their good linux support. As it is, all the rest of the dock works perfectly out of the box except for the displaylink adapter.

Be awesome. The linux community (myself personally included) will go out our way to help.

I also have a Thinkpad, in part because of it's Linux support. Bought a ThinkPad USB 3.0 Dock to support my peripherals at the office and am disappointed to find that it doesn't support my external monitor with built-in speakers. Does support external keyboard, mouse, gigabit network, etc.
Please make Linux support a priority.

[Wim]

So here's the problem.

We had exactly the same back in 2008 for our DL-1x5 chips. So we did development to enable these on Linux and released the driver into the community. This wasn't a complete solution, as there are many variants of Linux and the graphics architecture was not suited to multiple displays in the same way Windows already was. But the information and example drivers released gave all the tools needed to create a driver and a solution on Linux. If there was enough demand for DisplayLink technology on Linux, all the tools were enabled for the community to do it.

Fast forward 5 years, and DisplayLink technology and the graphics architecture issues on Linux still has issues, as this recent post from Plugable shows. It slowly gets better, but it still does not "just work" without bugs and a lot of configuration. It seems the demand on Linux is not there currently, otherwise if it was really desired, the work would have been done to improve this by the community.

As the Linux community hasn't adopted multiple displays or created "easy to use" DisplayLink drivers for the DL-1x5 chips, justifying the work we would have to do to enable DL-3xxx support on Linux is difficult. So if you want to help show there is demand for DL-3xxx Linux drivers, making drivers stable and easy to use for the DL-1x5 family and showing demand for these USB 2.0 products on Linux first would be the catalyst to get DL-3xxx family support on Linux.

Ourselves and Plugable want to see our devices working on Linux. If you want to help develop this support for the DL-1x5 and show that there would also be demand for the DL-3xxx, then Plugable and running a hardware seeding program here:

http://plugable.com/projects/plugabl...amples-program

Wim

[luiset83]

Originally Posted by Wim

So here's the problem.

We had exactly the same back in 2008 for our DL-1x5 chips. So we did development to enable these on Linux and released the driver into the community. This wasn't a complete solution, as there are many variants of Linux and the graphics architecture was not suited to multiple displays in the same way Windows already was. But the information and example drivers released gave all the tools needed to create a driver and a solution on Linux. If there was enough demand for DisplayLink technology on Linux, all the tools were enabled for the community to do it.

Fast forward 5 years, and DisplayLink technology and the graphics architecture issues on Linux still has issues, as this recent post from Plugable shows. It slowly gets better, but it still does not "just work" without bugs and a lot of configuration. It seems the demand on Linux is not there currently, otherwise if it was really desired, the work would have been done to improve this by the community.

As the Linux community hasn't adopted multiple displays or created "easy to use" DisplayLink drivers for the DL-1x5 chips, justifying the work we would have to do to enable DL-3xxx support on Linux is difficult. So if you want to help show there is demand for DL-3xxx Linux drivers, making drivers stable and easy to use for the DL-1x5 family and showing demand for these USB 2.0 products on Linux first would be the catalyst to get DL-3xxx family support on Linux.

Ourselves and Plugable want to see our devices working on Linux. If you want to help develop this support for the DL-1x5 and show that there would also be demand for the DL-3xxx, then Plugable and running a hardware seeding program here:

http://plugable.com/projects/plugabl...amples-program

Wim

I agree that the driver for the DL-1x5 chips that was released is/was limited to some extent. However, the fact that Fedora 18 has actually made these devices plug and play (Ubuntu's latest release has not yet, I don't think) is actually a good amount of progress, IMO, and I believe others would agree.

As these devices are not a critical system component, it is understandable that development lags behind drivers for other such components (integrated sound and video, for example). We certainly don't need some sort of finished and polished driver that works with every *nix system out there, but it would be ideal to have that base from which others in the open source community can improve upon!

Sadly my field is not in video processing, otherwise I would enroll in Pluggable's program. Even so, it feels like the burden is put on the community to reverse engineer a product when the developers have all the tools needed to get a decent solution out to the community to begin with...

[khamer]

Originally Posted by Wim

So here's the problem.

We had exactly the same back in 2008 for our DL-1x5 chips. So we did development to enable these on Linux and released the driver into the community. This wasn't a complete solution, as there are many variants of Linux and the graphics architecture was not suited to multiple displays in the same way Windows already was. But the information and example drivers released gave all the tools needed to create a driver and a solution on Linux. If there was enough demand for DisplayLink technology on Linux, all the tools were enabled for the community to do it.

Fast forward 5 years, and DisplayLink technology and the graphics architecture issues on Linux still has issues, as this recent post from Plugable shows. It slowly gets better, but it still does not "just work" without bugs and a lot of configuration. It seems the demand on Linux is not there currently, otherwise if it was really desired, the work would have been done to improve this by the community.

As the Linux community hasn't adopted multiple displays or created "easy to use" DisplayLink drivers for the DL-1x5 chips, justifying the work we would have to do to enable DL-3xxx support on Linux is difficult. So if you want to help show there is demand for DL-3xxx Linux drivers, making drivers stable and easy to use for the DL-1x5 family and showing demand for these USB 2.0 products on Linux first would be the catalyst to get DL-3xxx family support on Linux.

Ourselves and Plugable want to see our devices working on Linux. If you want to help develop this support for the DL-1x5 and show that there would also be demand for the DL-3xxx, then Plugable and running a hardware seeding program here:

http://plugable.com/projects/plugabl...amples-program

Wim

2008 was two years before the first USB 3.0 products, three years before Intel announced their push for ultrabooks and trademarked the word "ultrabook" itself. Ubuntu was only just becoming mainstream in 2007 and 2008, and the second most popular distro at the time, Fedora, did add support for the DL-1x5.

Five years later, its 2013. Companies like Lenovo are pushing ultrabooks and completely dropped availability of their USB 2.0 dock. These companies are relying on USB 3.0 and DisplayLink for parity with Thunderbolt.

Congratulations! You've got a vice-like hold on an entire workflow.

Saying "Maybe we'll support the current generation products if you go back and add better support for the products that are being end-of-life'd" is at best busy work.

[noleti]

Originally Posted by Wim

So here's the problem.

We had exactly the same back in 2008 for our DL-1x5 chips. So we did development to enable these on Linux and released the driver into the community. This wasn't a complete solution, as there are many variants of Linux and the graphics architecture was not suited to multiple displays in the same way Windows already was. But the information and example drivers released gave all the tools needed to create a driver and a solution on Linux. If there was enough demand for DisplayLink technology on Linux, all the tools were enabled for the community to do it.

Fast forward 5 years, and DisplayLink technology and the graphics architecture issues on Linux still has issues, as this recent post from Plugable shows. It slowly gets better, but it still does not "just work" without bugs and a lot of configuration. It seems the demand on Linux is not there currently, otherwise if it was really desired, the work would have been done to improve this by the community.

As the Linux community hasn't adopted multiple displays or created "easy to use" DisplayLink drivers for the DL-1x5 chips, justifying the work we would have to do to enable DL-3xxx support on Linux is difficult. So if you want to help show there is demand for DL-3xxx Linux drivers, making drivers stable and easy to use for the DL-1x5 family and showing demand for these USB 2.0 products on Linux first would be the catalyst to get DL-3xxx family support on Linux.

Ourselves and Plugable want to see our devices working on Linux. If you want to help develop this support for the DL-1x5 and show that there would also be demand for the DL-3xxx, then Plugable and running a hardware seeding program here:

http://plugable.com/projects/plugabl...amples-program

Wim

I understand your (very defensive) rationale. You want to get support for your driver for free from the community, without investing too much effort. You do not see the potential of embedded/thin devices running Linux, that is your choice.
But my personal problem is that you are still not stating clearly on your webpage that DL-3xxx devices will not be supported for a long time. I bought a device using your technology relying on your information on your website which said that "An open source driver is available, which is now built into the Linux kernel. Linux support for DisplayLink devices is supported by the Linux community." Given that there was very little information about the DL-3xxx chip with Linux at that time anywhere on the net, I had to rely on this.
Thus, I bought the Lenovo USB3 dock believing your FAQ statement to be true (and applying to this dock). Many people in this thread did the same. Be more honest on your website, then less people will feel scammed. Don't point towards long dead projects websites without updates. This thread is a good start - but more proactive communication would help. Posting this rationale earlier would also have helped raising interest into your issues without angering customers with bricks on their desks.

[gurrier]

This is disappointing.

I arrived at this thread towards the end of a search for solution.

Canonical are launching an Ubuntu phone at the end of February.
To be able to dock this as a PC would be a huge boon for business.

This should be evident to DisplayLink and promises a huge opportunity.

http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/phone

Please reconsider support for linux.

[69AD0EF9]

Originally Posted by noleti

I understand your (very defensive) rationale. You want to get support for your driver for free from the community, without investing too much effort. You do not see the potential of embedded/thin devices running Linux, that is your choice.
But my personal problem is that you are still not stating clearly on your webpage that DL-3xxx devices will not be supported for a long time. I bought a device using your technology relying on your information on your website which said that "An open source driver is available, which is now built into the Linux kernel. Linux support for DisplayLink devices is supported by the Linux community." Given that there was very little information about the DL-3xxx chip with Linux at that time anywhere on the net, I had to rely on this.
Thus, I bought the Lenovo USB3 dock believing your FAQ statement to be true (and applying to this dock). Many people in this thread did the same. Be more honest on your website, then less people will feel scammed. Don't point towards long dead projects websites without updates. This thread is a good start - but more proactive communication would help. Posting this rationale earlier would also have helped raising interest into your issues without angering customers with bricks on their desks.

Exactly!
If possible i will return mine ASAP. Guess word will go out into the community now, that DisplayLink is officially *NOT* supporting linux....

PS: i needed like 20 attempts to comple registration - these images are completly unreadable - hope someone will write a tool soon, which can decipher these catpchas - becaue i as a human certainly can't...