recently I got a new USB 3.0 Monitor, the ASUS MB169B+.
I was curious, if it runs without Problems on Linux Mint. As stated on displaylink.com, Ubuntu 14.4.2 and newer are supported. Linux Mint 18.1 is based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, so there shouldn't be any issues.
From Displaylink.com I downloaded the linux driver version 1.3.52.
Ran the script as superuser and then plugged in the monitor - and tada! It worked! Great!
After the upgrade from Mint 18.3 to 19, the monitor isn't working any more. The screen stays black after the ASUS logo appeared. An the Cinnamon desktop doesn't respond any more. The mouse cursor works, but nothing is clickable any more. No solutions found so far.
Der beschriebene Workaround Nr. 2 in 1) hilft, yey!
Another workaround that has been proven to help on most Ubuntu 17.04 systems and some late 16.04 updates is to use the "intel" driver for the integrated GPU instead of "modesetting", which is now the default. To do this, as a root user create a file 20-displaylink.conf under: /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/ with following content: Section "Device" Identifier "Intel Graphics" Driver "intel" EndSection Again, a reboot is required for the setting to be effective.
When you leave the monitor in its default arrangement, notebook left, ASUS monitor right, then there are no issues with reconnecting it - it works every time as expected.
When you want to use the monitor on the left of your main screen, then this works also as expected, but only unitl you want to reconnect the monitor. Then the window manager crashes - it shows the windows, but with some hundrets of pixel-offest and they are not klickable any more. The mouse cursor works as expected, but no click-events are handled any more.
The only thing how to fix this, is a reboot, which you can only trigger from another terminal (Ctrl+Alt+F1) by typing
reboot
EDIT: killing cinnamon helps also
sudo pkill cinnamon
It is mentioned on displaylink.com, but it also happens on the native monitor, when the USB monitor is connected. This is somehow annoying, but not critical.
The most recent problem was, that I couldn't get the USB monitor running on the left side of the notebook. The Cinnamon Display Manager failed to apply the config.
With ARandR I can switch the config and apply it as needed.
sudo apt install arandr
With ARandR you can save several configurations in
~/.screenlayout
. The configs are shell scripts which can be run with a double click from the file manager or started from a terminal, which could be handy, if cinnamon „crashes“.
Using the monitor on Windows 7 is without any problems - even the rotation of the monitor to portrait mode is detected on the fly.
It seems, that the windows driver is able to update the firmware of the monitor, which happens, when you connect it after a reboot.