DisplayLink on Debian 12 (bookworm) / GNOME?

[jbize@godswind.org]

I am running Debian 12 Bookworm (GNOME) and I have an old USB3 docking station (Plugable UD-3900) that requires the DisplayLink driver.

I have installed evdi-dkms, libevdi0, and libevdi0-dev (ver 1.12.0+dfsg-0.3) via apt. However, there is no bookworm package that provides a displaylink driver service. In fact, the evdi-dkms description warns that this is not a complete driver.

So how do I proceed? I've tried several different things, including the following:

https://github.com/AdnanHodzic/displaylink-debian
https://gitlab.gwdg.de/kayali/displaylink
https://www.synaptics.com/products/displaylink-graphics/downloads/ubuntu-6.0


However, these fundamentally seem to all work from the same source: displaylink-driver-6.1.0-17.run

Executing that attempts to build evdi ver 1.14.7 which will not compile on Debian 12. The log shows many errors such as:
/var/lib/dkms/evdi/1.14.7/build/evdi_fb.c: In function ‘evdifb_create’:
/var/lib/dkms/evdi/1.14.7/build/evdi_fb.c:408:23: error: ‘struct drm_fb_helper’ has no member named ‘info’
408 | efbdev->helper.info = info;
| ^


So clearly Debian 12 libraries are incompatible with the new version of 1.14.7.


Is there another version of the driver package that will work?
Has anyone gotten DisplayLink to work on Debian 12?
Are there any other suggestions?

[jbize@godswind.org]

Well,

I kept plugging away and stumbled into the solution...

For anyone that's interested:

I uninstalled the three evdi related packages via apt (evdi-dkms, libevdi0, and libevdi0-dev). (They're a red herring.)
I downloaded the Legacy Driver 'DisplayLink USB Graphics Software for Ubuntu6.0-EXE.zip' from https://www.synaptics.com/products/displaylink-graphics/downloads/ubuntu
I then unzipped it, made the .run file executable, and ran it with sudo.


That's all it took and my USB3 docking station works on my (stable) Debian 12 box.