I have a DL-165 adapter from plugable. I have not been able to get it to work in ubuntu 12.04 and higher – I don’t even get the green screen under 13.04. On a wimp I tried fedora 18 (off the live CD), and to my surprise, (1) it mirrors the main display after I activate it in display setting, and (2) extended desktop works perfectly after I install arandr. It just works – no tweaking was needed!
This is perfect. But I use ubuntu at work/home and I’d rather not have to deal with another distro. Question: How should I tweak ubuntu 13.04 (or whichever version/kernel combo) to make it works like it does in fedora 18?
Thanks!
Hi Saou,
I’m sorry, we don’t have an answer — unfortunately everything related to multiple monitors or multiple terminals on Linux right now is very distro dependent (and spins within distros). Frankly, it’s a disaster. It’s not just GDM vs. KDE, but also systemd vs. sysvinit, X vs. Wayland, fbdev vs. DRM, etc, etc… The APIs and UIs are completely balkanized, and combinations that do work are very version dependent.
It may be possible to make a series of changes to an Ubuntu 13.04 system to make it use the same versions of kernel, xorg, window manager, login manager, udev scripts, systemd, etc. as Fedora 18 – all the things that affect multiple monitor support.
But then you wouldn’t really be running Ubuntu anymore – you’d have a franken-Fedora that probably would have all kinds of fragility problems interoperating with other stuff, especially Ubuntu updates.
I guess the short answer, is that without Canonical’s buy-in on supporting USB multiple monitors as a use case, they will always be breaking any support that is done by the community.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I don’t want to set any unrealistic expectations!
Bernie
Hello Bernie,
I just wanted to know if there is any update about Ubuntu and DL-165. Or if you have any suggestion (except change distribution) to plug-in a second monitor on Ubuntu ?
Thanks,
Simon