Hi… I love my plugable and have been using it for a long time without issue. I have two monitors that I use it with on my windows 10 machines. Every now and then I get a “bleep” and the screens freeze for a sec and all my work, on the two external monitors flash, disappear, and reappear on my laptop screen. Its irritating but all I do is drag them back to where they were. Any thoughts on why this happens and what I can do to stop it?
But. Thats not the main reason for writing here. I have just installed Linus Mint 19.1 Cinnamon as a dual boot on one of the machines. When I plug the plugable into the system nothing happens. Anyone tell me how I get to use multiple monitors on Linux mint 19.1 using my trusty plugable?
Thanks for reaching out to us, I am sorry this is not working as expected.
We do not support our USB graphics adapters with Linux operating systems. We support Linux on our products whenever possible. (Plugable’s founder has even submitted driver code over the years.) Unfortunately USB graphics support in Linux hasn’t reached the point where we can recommend this combination. We’re hoping that will change as development continues, and we’ll certainly update our product listings to reflect this change if and when things get to the point where we can recommend it with confidence.
DisplayLink, the manufacturer of the chipset and software used in our USB graphics adapters and docking stations does provide drivers for Ubuntu Linux here ( https://www.displaylink.com/downloads/ubuntu ) and provides limited support for Linux through their support site here ( https://support.displaylink.com/knowledgebase/topics/103927-troubleshooting-ubuntu ). Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu and may be compatible with the Ubuntu driver however we have not tested this and do not recommend this configuration.
As for the flashing, this can be caused by a variety of issues, I would like to start by getting some additional information from your system. If you would, please boot to Windows and keep the hub connected and both monitors attached and attach the output of our diagnostic utility PlugDebug ( http://plugable.com/support/plugdebug ) to an email to support@plugable.com with the subject line “Ticket #261095 - Attention Pat” as this will allow us to examine some log files from your system to help determine the next steps.
I can also check to see if your system’s hardware will be compatible with one of our docking stations that works better with Linux.
Thanks Pat… Emailed directly regarding Win10 issue.
Linux Mint… I’ll watch this space…
Hopefully Linux will catch up sometime.
Appreciate the very swift response
Keith
Thank you for providing the PlugDebug log files, the first thing I noticed is the DisplayLink drivers are out of date compared to the Intel Graphics Drivers, this may be causing some problems. Our first step is to reset the dock and perform a ‘clean’ installation of the required DisplayLink drivers to help ensure both are in a good state. Please perform the following:
Disconnect the graphics adapters from the system. Please keep them disconnected until the last step.
Uninstall any and all software with ‘DisplayLink’ in the title that is present from within the Control Panel -> Programs and Features. Don’t worry if these entries are not present or if the process does not work, just move onto the next step
We’re closing this thread due to inactivity, but if you have any further questions please feel free to contact support@plugable.com and we’ll be happy to help.