I was excited to install Linux on my desktop system. Since I’m working from home with my office laptop, I got a displaylink dock that I can easily switch between laptop and desktop.

After setting everything up with Ubuntu 22.04 I had it all working. A few days later I installed software updates, including an update for the driver for my graphics card, a Nvidia 3070, and then the problems started. I had to hook up a monitor again with a direct cable and fix the driver and again the displaylink. The same thing happened later again. I went with the recommended proprietary driver from Ubuntu. I believe i started with version 525 or 535.

To my frustration, in Windows it all works happily together, survives driver updates, etc.

Is this even a viable setup for a Linux machine where I don’t have to tinker every time there is a driver update?

I’m not a novice, I find my way around, but I do want a stable system.

I chose the Nvidia card mostly because I’m dabbing in machine learning.

Any ideas?

Thanks for any advice I get.

  • @[email protected]
    2•1 year ago

    I’ve been using a displaylink for 3 years now, mostly on Ubuntu and the past 8 months with endeavours/arch, but I don’t have the Nvidia. For me it has been the delicate art of managing updates to the kernel/evdi/displaylink packages. If one gets out of sync, I lose the use of my extra screens. If you want stable, only upgrade any of those three after checking very carefully. Typically I’ve seen displaylink support for the newer kernels lag a little behind, or an evdi update that breaks displaylink until they catch up.

    If you’re more adventuresome, you can just learn how to back up to known working versions of those packages that play nicely together until they are in sync again.