Displaylink: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 20:33, 2 April 2025

DisplayLink monitors

In order to use DisplayLink monitors over USB, such as the ASUS MB16AC, the DisplayLink driver needs to be installed:

services.xserver.videoDrivers = [ "displaylink" "modesetting" ];

The module nixos/modules/hardware/video/displaylink.nix should also work for wlroots compositors.

Since these drivers depend on binary unfree blobs, you will need to first add it to your Nix store.

When you try to use pkgs.displaylink in your nixos system, you will get the instructions printed to the stderr, follow those to prefetch the driver.

Run nix-shell -p displaylink --arg config '{ allowUnfree = true; }' to get the instructions.

Connecting a second external monitor

In order to add a second external monitor you can add the following to your configuration:

services.xserver.displayManager.sessionCommands = ''
    ${lib.getBin pkgs.xorg.xrandr}/bin/xrandr --setprovideroutputsource 2 0
'';

Sway

Identify which card has the render device, evdi is the DisplayLink interface, so it's not card0, but card1.

$ ls -l /dev/dri/by-path
lrwxrwxrwx - root  2 Nov 13:38 pci-0000:00:02.0-card -> ../card1
lrwxrwxrwx - root  2 Nov 13:38 pci-0000:00:02.0-render -> ../renderD128
lrwxrwxrwx - root  2 Nov 13:38 platform-evdi.0-card -> ../card0

environment.variables = {    
  WLR_EVDI_RENDER_DEVICE = "/dev/dri/card1";                                                                                                   
};
nixpkgs.overlays = [
  (final: prev: {    
    wlroots_0_17 = prev.wlroots_0_17.overrideAttrs (old: { # you may need to use 0_18
      patches = (old.patches or [ ]) ++ [
        (prev.fetchpatch {
          url = "https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wlroots/wlroots/uploads/bd115aa120d20f2c99084951589abf9c/DisplayLink_v2.patch";
              hash = "sha256-vWQc2e8a5/YZaaHe+BxfAR/Ni8HOs2sPJ8Nt9pfxqiE=";
            })       
          ];
        });
      })
];
services.xserver.videoDrivers = [ "displaylink" ];
systemd.services.dlm.wantedBy = [ "multi-user.target" ];

Note as of 2024-10-30 nixos-unstable sway uses wlroots_0_18. The patch above applies correctly but you will need to invoke sway with the --unsupported-gpu flag.

Source

@@ Line 4: / Line 4: @@
 </syntaxhighlight>The module <code>nixos/modules/hardware/video/displaylink.nix</code> should also work for wlroots compositors.
-Since these drivers depend on binary unfree blobs, you will need to first add it to your Nix store. Go to https://www.displaylink.com/downloads/ubuntu to get the appropriate driver version and note the download URL you get after accepting the EULA.
+Since these drivers depend on binary unfree blobs, you will need to first add it to your Nix store.
-As of 2024-05-01, the current latest version for the driver can be found at https://www.synaptics.com/products/displaylink-graphics/downloads/ubuntu-6.0?filetype=exe.
+When you try to use <code>pkgs.displaylink</code> in your nixos system, you will get the instructions printed to the stderr, follow those to prefetch the driver.
-After you have downloaded the driver, run something like the following, adjusting the version number in <code>displaylink-600.zip</code> to match the version supported in NixOS at the moment:<syntaxhighlight lang="console">
+Run <code>nix-shell -p displaylink --arg config '{ allowUnfree = true; }'</code> to get the instructions.
-$ nix-prefetch-url --name displaylink-600.zip https://www.synaptics.com/sites/default/files/exe_files/2024-05/DisplayLink%20USB%20Graphics%20Software%20for%20Ubuntu6.0-EXE.zip
-</syntaxhighlight>
 ====Connecting a second external monitor====
@@ Line 49: / Line 47: @@
 </syntaxhighlight>
-Note as of [https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/351752 2014-10-30] nixos-unstable sway uses <code>wlroots_0_18</code>. The patch above applies correctly but you will need to invoke sway with the <code>--unsupported-gpu</code> flag.
+Note as of [https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/351752 2024-10-30] nixos-unstable sway uses <code>wlroots_0_18</code>. The patch above applies correctly but you will need to invoke sway with the <code>--unsupported-gpu</code> flag.
 [https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wlroots/wlroots/-/issues/1823#note_2146862 Source]
 [[Category:Video]]