DisplayLink Driver 6.1

DisplayLink adapters and many USB-C docks do not carry a real video signal. They compress the framebuffer and send it over USB, which means they need a driver that renders and encodes in software.

That is why a dock that “just works” on Windows shows nothing on Linux until this is installed.

Check whether you actually have one

lsusb | grep -i displaylink
lsusb | grep -i '17e9:'

Vendor ID 17e9 is DisplayLink. Many docks use it without saying so on the box, which is why people spend an evening debugging a monitor that was never going to work.

Docks using DisplayPort Alt Mode do not need this driver. Those carry a real DisplayPort signal over USB-C and work with the normal graphics driver. Checking lsusb first tells you which kind you have.

Two components

evdi, an open-source kernel module providing a virtual display device. This is built by DKMS and rebuilds on kernel updates.

A proprietary userspace daemon that does the compression and talks to the hardware.

sudo systemctl status displaylink-driver
dkms status | grep evdi

If evdi fails to build after a kernel update, the displays stop working. This is the usual failure and the reason to check dkms status before rebooting.

Installing

Synaptics publishes an Ubuntu installer. For Fedora and others, the community displaylink-rpm project packages it, and Arch has AUR packages.

Version compatibility with your kernel matters more than with most drivers, because evdi tracks kernel graphics internals closely. A very new kernel frequently needs a newer evdi than your distribution ships.

Expectations

Performance is limited by USB bandwidth and CPU. Text and normal desktop use are fine. Video playback and anything animated are noticeably worse than a real display output, because every frame is compressed on the CPU and sent over USB.

For a second monitor showing documentation or a terminal, it is fine. For video editing or gaming, it is not.

Wayland

Support has historically lagged, and an X11 session is sometimes the working configuration. Check the current state for your distribution before assuming, since this has been improving.

Verify Your Download

Synaptics publishes checksums with the installer. The community packaging projects publish their own.