Install DisplayLink drivers on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, fix the square around mouse error and use non accelerated drivers instead nvidia/amd ones

Question

I have a fresh installation of Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and would like to install the DisplayLink drivers so that I can use various DisplayLink peripherals and I tried some official passages but I'm gettin a square around the mouse and forced to use nvidia proprietary driver (the same goes for amd graphic cards).

Answer 1

No worries man, let me help you.

In order to make working the displaylink drivers on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS you can install the drivers manually or via repository.

I would follow the 2nd way, go download the .deb package to easily install the repository (because they don't give directly a ppa file).

So visit this website: https://www.synaptics.com/products/displaylink-graphics/downloads/ubuntu and download manually the .deb file or use directly the wget passage.

wget https://www.synaptics.com/sites/default/files/Ubuntu/pool/stable/main/all/synaptics-repository-keyring.deb
sudo dpkg -y -i synaptics-repository-keyring.deb
sudo apt update
sudo apt install displaylink-driver
sudo reboot

(you need to reboot otherwise mess would happen with the displaylink drivers partially loaded)

Then, you will notice this:

• If you enable the monitors they will stay with a grey background giving only the mouse visible on them.

• Will be shown a box with incorrect pixel data around the mouse cursor

In order to fix this passage, the problem according this answer https://askubuntu.com/a/1143373/522207 it depends by the fact that displaylink drivers are loaded too early in the boot process, a temporary fix could be restart the display manager process but It's better to fix everything in the config because restarting the process each time isn't nice.

Following that passage let's use this fix, updated for ubuntu 22 LTS and Wayland (the previous answer uses sdm).

Let's edit with nano:

nano /lib/systemd/system/displaylink.driver.service

change the line

After=display-mananger.service

with

Before=display-manager.service

and in /lib/systemd/system/display-manager.service

nano /lib/systemd/system/display-manager.service

change ExecStart with

/bin/sh -c '/bin/sleep 10 && /usr/sbin/gdm3'
sudo reboot

And the problem should be gone.

For the nvidia drivers first switch to them, do a full boot, then you can switch back to opensource ones.