USB 3.0 Displaylink DL-3000 series: DL-3100 / DL-3500 / DL-3900

[fbachofner]

Originally Posted by fbachofner

Doing that right now!

I just took a moment to write to Roberto, Jaya and Bernie, the authors of the USB 2 driver for DisplayLink products as pointed out by frief above.

I linked to this thread, mentioned the growing demand and the idea that various participants in this thread thought crowdsourced funding could work. [I also offered to help in any way I can - unfortunately that does not extend to coding video drivers.]

Bernie Thompson is apparently the founder of Pluggable. Hopefully he will visit this thread and see the demand for a Linux driver for these USB 3 devices based on DisplayLink technology.


I think DisplayLink should be a little embarrassed in having tried getting more adoption of the older USB 2 devices when clearly everyone has noted the benefits of moving on to USB 3, especially given the desire for multi-monitor setups.

This issue really needs to be addressed NOW.

I will continue to vote with my dollars and my clients with theirs. Right now, everyone we advise on Linux systems is holding off on ANY DisplayLink purchase as these devices are unusable for display extending purposes.


Hopefully a solution for Linux will arrive soon!

[fbachofner]

Originally Posted by fbachofner

I just took a moment to write to Roberto, Jaya and Bernie

Bernie wrote back incredibly quickly:

On 3/5/2013 11:54 PM, Bernie Thompson wrote:
> Hi Felix,
>
> DisplayLink's USB 3.0 chips use an encrypted protocol for sending
> commands (all of which is very different from the USB 2.0 generation
> chips).
>
> A first step is DisplayLink would need to choose to open that up and
> document it. There's no way for someone outside of DisplayLink to
> embark on this effort until then.
>
> Sorry for the bad news,
> Bernie


I responded as follows:


Hi Bernie:


Thanks for the quick response!

In the previously referenced thread, Wim (of DisplayLink) alludes to the problem you cite by mentioning this is all somewhat complicated because (among other issues) "the DL-3000 supports content protection."

Dan, also of DisplayLink, later mentions "we've just released Alpha Mac drivers for DL-3xxx". Might those be of help? Based on BSD, I would assume Mac OSX is somewhat similar to Linux. On the other hand, the display elements are probably almost entirely different since they are now (I believe) based on XQuartz. Of course XQuartz is open sourced, so this may still be of significant help.

Wim suggests that DisplayLink is amenable to helping the Linux driver effort [ http://www.displaylink.org/forum/sho...9&postcount=35 ] if a better solution for the older devices is crafted. [Your company, Pluggable, is in fact referenced in that post as providing no cost test ("seeding") hardware for developers -- thank you! . . . I'm sorry my skill set does not apply].

I'm sure Pluggable would love better Linux support for the older series, but this backward-looking emphasis seems to fly in the face of the technology industry which continually invents a better mousetrap and quickly abandons the older one.

Any way, is there anything else I (or anyone else) might be able to do to help with this situation? [For starters, I will post this in the thread and hope it will inspire DisplayLink to open the requisite data.]

Thanks again for your interest and effort!


Felix


Hopefully something positive will come from all this.

[AndyF]

In the previously referenced thread, Wim (of DisplayLink) alludes to the problem you cite by mentioning this is all somewhat complicated because (among other issues) "the DL-3000 supports content protection."

This is indeed true. However, it is "possible" to allow open access to the none content protection sensitive parts of the protocol without compromising the devices security. I would be more than happy to write the open source drivers free of charge but I would need access to documentation that I no longer have access to, and possibly an extremely small level of cooperation from the firmware team, whom I know well.

Andy F

[crayola]

Hi --

I have nothing to add to the ongoing discussion, though I just thought I should signal my strong interest in USB 3.0 DisplayLink support for Linux. I almost made the mistake to order the lenovo USB 3.0 dock, under the assumption that it would work under Ubuntu; thankfully I cancelled the order after reading this thread..