DisplayLink drivers on Ubuntu 17.10
22.09.2017
**Update: Driver version 1.4 works on 17.10 without hacks mentioned below. **
(there is whole journey of me and DisplayLink, NVidia, Intel and Dell troublemakers - see here and here and here)
After last updates I ended up with unbelievably annoying flickering, and sometimes completely missing, cursor on main display.
Desperate people do desperate actions. So I have tried to upgrade to Ubuntu 17.10 with kernel 4.13. Attempt to install "DisplayLink USB Graphics Software for Ubuntu 1.3.54" failed with following issue:
/var/lib/dkms/evdi/1.3.54/build/evdi_gem.c: In function ‘evdi_prime_create’:
/var/lib/dkms/evdi/1.3.54/build/evdi_gem.c:276:15: error: implicit declaration of function ‘drm_malloc_ab’; did you mean ‘dma_alloc_wc’? [-Werror=implicit-function-declaration]
obj->pages = drm_malloc_ab(npages, sizeof(struct page *));
^~~~~~~~~~~~~
dma_alloc_wc
I have asked on forum when 17.10 will be supported. Meanwhile there is workaround:
- Download 1.3.54 driver from http://www.displaylink.com/downloads/ubuntu
- Run installer with parameter keep ./displaylink-driver-1.3.54.run --keep
- It fails, but in current directory there is folder displaylink-driver-1.3.54
- There is file evdi-1.3.54-src.tar.gz, move it somewhere into temp directory
- Unpack using tar -zxvf evdi-1.3.54-src.tar.gz
- Replace evdi_gem.c by this file from this commit
- Pack it again using tar cvzf evdi-1.3.54-src.tar.gz *
- Replace original file in folder displaylink-driver-1.3.54
- Install driver using ./displaylink-driver-1.3.54/displaylink-installer.sh install
- Reboot computer, device should be recognized
- But Gnome with Wayland will switch off because recognizes unsupported device. (when will be supported Wayland is a big question)
- So first other shell is selected - Plasma in my case. Unfortunatelly most of packages is missing so nasty error appears.
- Log out, and on login screen below credentials select cog and there Unity
- Then it works except screen connected on DisplayLink shows only cursor
- Apply workaround 2 from here, reboot computer
- Voila!

Tagy: DisplayLink, Ubuntu