DisplayLink, EVDI, Wayland, and Plasma

I have the latest everything:

displaylink-1.6.2-5.27 from home:dstoecker / openSUSE_Tumbleweed

evdi-1.6.2-2.16 from home:malcolmlewis:TESTING / openSUSE_Tumbleweed
Kernel 5.3.5-1.2

Up until recently, it was working relatively well, with a few reboots happening in order to get all of my monitors up. The last round of updates made things break, and I am at a bit of a loss as the the correct combination of things to make it work again.

If I reboot and sign into KDE and select Plasma, I get all four monitors, but the Plasmashell (toolbars, wallpapers, etc) doesn’t start. If I start into Wayland or Full Wayland, everything starts up normally (including the transitions and windows effects that haven’t been working for a while), except I don’t get the monitors that are attached to my DisplayLink docking station.

I’d appreciate some guidance on what I should have and what I should be using to get all four monitors working again. (Thanks for all the help and work already put into this!)

Hi
Probably two issues, the displaylink repo is broken… as in build fails for Tumbleweed;

Since there is a plethora of displaylink packages (which should not be on OBS since it breaches the Displaylink license, not allowed to be re-distributed), this leads to your second issue in that I have disabled my edvi package (which is GPL) to ensure no association with the displaylink packages on OBS.

Edit: the displaylink package also provides the evdi module, so if it’s not building then it maybe the evdi module is not working, check with /sbin/modinfo evdi and check the file path.

If it isn’t a problem, I would appreciate it if you did re-enable/rebuild it, thank you!

I don’t want you to have to change the setup just for me, though I am not sure how else to get it working. Is there a different repo I should be adding? Is there a different place I should be getting EDVI?

Hi
I’ve re-enabled the Tumbleweed build for you :wink: It should be built soon for the 5.3.5 kernel.

I now have evdi-kmp-default 1.6.2_k5.3.5_1-2.27, rebooted, but there is still no change. Plasma gives me all four screens, but no plasmashell, Plasma (Wayland) and Plasma (Full Wayland) gives me everything, but not the screens that come through the DisplayLink.

Hi
Can you switch to Xorg and see if it’s Wayland related?

I went to just “Plasma”, which apparently is Xorg. After a few reboots, I was able to get all four screens with the Plasmashell working, but none of the desktop effects that I had in Wayland.

Is there a way to get all of it, or am I stuck in Xorg if I want my extra monitors?

Hi
I would guess a bug report might be the best course of action, your setup is somewhat unique… plus I’m a GNOME user :wink: Maybe another plasma user can comment.

Maybe it’s time for me to try out Gnome…

Hi
Download a Live USB of GNOME and install the displaylink/evdi packages and see how it goes? Or wait a week or so for the dust to settle on GNOME 3.34 which should come in the next snapshot if it gets through QA.

…or I’m too reckless and I can just open YAST and select GNOME, reboot and give a try.

Which I am doing. Do I have two DisplayLink monitors which have inverted colors, now.