Not sure if I needed to do more homework before buying this, but the screen resolution I’m getting on extended displays on my displaylink dock are pretty low. This makes the fonts huge and the opportunity for multitasking greatly reduced. A default terminal window takes up about 80% of a secondary screen.
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What os are you using? how are you connecting your laptop to the dock? What type of connection are you using from the dock to the external monitor?
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I’m on Ubuntu 21.10 and it is a usb3 dock connected to my usbA port, monitors are connected to the dock via HDMI, I have gotten much higher resolution with an old windows7 and macbook on the same dock/monitor setup. I am looking on intel’s site for specs on the graphics chipset right now
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Seems due to multiple packages being involved, Intel does not provide drivers direct to users, and defers to the OS or hardware maker.
I know this may be well known to others but this is the first time I have tried to run full time on any linux distro.
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What dock are you using?
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Depending on whether you’re using X or Wayland, you might just have scaling enabled because the main display is pretty high-res for its size, and the same scaling is just excessive on a 1080p external monitor.
If this is the case it wouldn’t mean there’s a problem with the actual resolution of your external display. Have you checked what the Displays settings panel says?
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I’m not sure what x and wayland refer to.
As far as the dock, I need to dig it out to see the make/model number, I can post tomorrow. It’s buried and I don’t have much cable slack on it right now. It is no longer sold where I bought it and it is pretty old. I have a newer dock I can swap it out for to test tomorrow.
I do have resolution options but both external monitors are maxed.
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https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ECDM78E/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_imm_1DK2JX9ETXD813Y523A9
The one I’m currently using looks like this, with different colors. A bunch of different names seem to have been slapped on the same hardware for years
Can you open a terminal and type loginctl session-status and paste the output here?
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If you have scaling over 100% (default for wayland is 200%), then the external monitor will definitely be affected.
Try setting the scaling to 100%, and see how the external monitor looks.
OK, I am running wayland, and I was playing with scaling to get a nice resolution off dock, going to play with that some more today. Also, reading up on these:
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XXXXXXXX@XXXXXXX:~$ loginctl session-status
2 - XXXXXXXX (1000)
Since: Fri 2021-11-12 23:52:42 EST; 11h ago
Leader: 1653 (gdm-session-wor)
Seat: seat0; vc2
TTY: tty2
Service: gdm-password; type wayland; class user
State: active
Unit: session-2.scope
├─1653 gdm-session-worker [pam/gdm-password]
├─1688 /usr/bin/gnome-keyring-daemon --daemonize --login
├─1755 /usr/libexec/gdm-wayland-session env GNOME_SHELL_SESSION_MODE=ubuntu /usr/bin/gnome-session --session=ubuntu
└─1758 /usr/libexec/gnome-session-binary --systemd --session=ubuntu
Nov 12 23:52:42 XXXXXXX systemd[1]: Started Session 2 of user XXXXXXXX.
Nov 12 23:52:43 XXXXXXX gnome-keyring-daemon[1688]: The Secret Service was already initialized
Nov 12 23:52:43 XXXXXXX gnome-keyring-daemon[1688]: The PKCS#11 component was already initialized
Nov 12 23:52:43 XXXXXXX gnome-keyring-daemon[1688]: The SSH agent was already initialized
Nov 13 00:08:10 XXXXXXX gdm-password][6704]: gkr-pam: unlocked login keyring
Nov 13 02:54:09 XXXXXXX gdm-password][18119]: gkr-pam: unlocked login keyring
Nov 13 10:14:49 XXXXXXX gdm-password][24926]: gkr-pam: unlocked login keyring
Nov 13 10:21:09 XXXXXXX gdm-password][26491]: gkr-pam: unlocked login keyring
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Seems I lied, one is HDMI and one is DVI. Also, this may predate 4K video and is probably the bottleneck
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and then I found this dock thread -
Hey, I was going to buy the same dock because of its low price. Did you get it to work or did you buy a new one?
Does anyone else own this? Did it work for them?
I’m not sure which dock you mean to buy, but after some Ubuntu updates, the dock resolution is better. In fact, several other issues were resolved through regular updates including power drain and sleep not working consistently.
@satcomjimmy Ah sorry! I was talking about this the Plugable Universal Docking Station: https://www.amazon.com/Plugable-Universal-Docking-Station-Ethernet/dp/B00ECDM78E
Assuming the specs on it are the same as the one I’ve been running for years, I am happy with it. Both of my monitors on the dock are running 1920x1080. Everything else I have tested on the dock also work, headsets, speakers, mice, keyboards. Docking and undocking is smooth. Because it is DisplayLink tech, I can still use my older laptops while I work through the transition too.
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