[Libdlo] what displaylink device should i buy and what steps are still needed?

[Bernie Thompson]

Hi Jelle,

Unless you're running a single PCIe graphics card, Linux graphics
configuration isn't for the faint of heart.  It's involved, and the
landscape is constantly changing.

Getting a separate X instance on a USB adapter isn't too bad.  Lots of
people doing that now with DisplayLink hardware on Linux. A few links
on that below.

But getting the extended desktop experience across several different
graphics adapters requires configuration specific twiddling (in
xorg.conf and beyond), and is riddled with problems.

On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 5:38 AM, Jelle de Jong
<jelledejong at powercraft.nl> wrote:
> However I am confused what driver/code I should use:

If you want the latest, look at
http://plugable.com/category/project/udlfb/ and in particular
http://plugable.com/2010/05/21/linux-support-for-higher-res-monitors-on-lower-res-displaylink-devices/
Or, even though he's working on a phone :), look at the graphics
portion of http://sven.killig.de/android/N1/2.2/usb_host/ (on the
latest debian, he's using the latest code from git.plugable.com).

If you want to run slightly older stuff,
http://www.pur3.co.uk/view.php?DisplayLink talks about setting things
up just with what's available in prebuilt Ubuntu 10.04 packages.

> I want to be able to attach the usb displaylink device, then attache my dvi
> monitor, then run xrandr to setup the monitor. What driver should I use for
> this?

RandR doesn't support multiple adapters today, and doesn't seem likely
in the near term (GPU object/shatter/etc support seems moribund?).
Xinerama is still the only way to get an extended desktop across
adapters AFAIK.  Mulchman has done the best blog posts on getting that
to work, but he has hit limits too:
http://mulchman.org/blog/?tag=displaylink

Bernie