[RESPONDED] Monitor is not detected (or detected with low res) when connected thru HDMI with hdmi card

My setup:

  • frame.work laptop 11th gen i5, 2x usb-c cards, 1x usb, 1x hdmi card,
  • linux kde neon 5.27 - with latest updates
  • at home I have 2x hp 1980x1080 monitors I usually connect to them with two separate hdmi cables
  • at my work I have 2k Lenovo monitor I connect with either usb-c or hdmi cable

Problem 1: At home, when I connect monitor (no matter which one, both HP and hdmi cables even after switching them are not working) to laptop by using hdmi cable sometimes it is not identified (e.g. the mouse and windows usually moved to connected screen, but the monitor is not turning on and is blank). This state seems to be persistent across reboots. Both home monitors show the same behavior, switching hdmi cables does not help. Also, strange resolution 1280x760 is selected instead of 1980x1024 supported by monitor

When I connect a monitor thru usb-c dock that has hdmi port - monitor starts working but with 1280x760 resolution (I have to change it manually to 1980x1024) - and this happens every time I connect / reconnect - e.g. monitor always resets to 1280x760 resolution.

Problem 2: At my work I have 2k monitor I connect to them thru usb c. When I bring laptop back home and try to connect thru usb-c hub to hdmi monitor - it starts showing pictures, by in low-resolution mode e.g. 1280x768 - and I have to manually switch to 1980x1080. Sometimes, after sleep, 1600x800 resolution is selected - with no option for 1980x1080 in dropdown (i have to turn on/off monitor multiple times + attach / detach hdmi from the laptop / monitor - also mutliple times - so that option for 1980x1080 resolution becomes available)

Hi levgen,

We don’t test against or provide ticket support for KDE Neon, but I will see if I can get some idea on what might be going on.

For the first part of this, are you using an HDMI expansion card? And if using a HDMI expansion card, was this tested on multiple expansion bays?

We see a number of customers having mixed results running docks, so I’ll focus on the direction connection mentioned above.

Some thoughts for testing this further:

  • Has this been tested with something like Fedora 38 Live USB, to see if the behavior is shared there (again, direct connection using supported HDMI expansion card if you have them)?
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Thx @Matt_Hartley for support & answers. I am extremely happy to receive support for linux + frame.work. You made my yesterday evening! Linux declared support was my primary reason I bought frame.work and ready to invest time into making it my prod / developer primary machine.

For the first part of this, are you using an HDMI expansion card? And if using a HDMI expansion card, was this tested on multiple expansion bays?

I am using frame.work expansion card for HDMI and connect monitors at home thru it. I guess I tried different bay (bottom right vs. bottom left) - the behavior was +/- similar. Will keep this advice in my mind and will try switching bays next time I see this issue.

This issue is quite random, but when it happens it persists across couple reboots. And only fixes when:

  1. I connect monitor thru usb-c dock. Dock has hdmi port.
  2. When I connect thru usb-c dock 1600x800 resolution is selected, but the image is shown on the monitor. (before it was 1024x768 and no image on monitor when connected thru hdmi directly)
  3. I manually change resolution to 1980x1080 if this option is available in dropdown for possible resolutions. If option is not available I keep re-connecting / turning off-on monitor / rebooting laptop - until this option becomes available.
    1. P.S. I have not identified more specific root cause for this issue. I will keep observing.

Also will try booting into live Fedora 38 or Ubuntu (Ubuntu is more preferable, if it is supported, check my question below), but my educated guess that everything would work + and probably? I need more extensive usage other than just boot to live from flash. This issue might start showing up after I install Ubuntu / Fedora on ssd and start using it day-2-day.

We don’t test against or provide ticket support for KDE Neon, but I will see if I can get some idea on what might be going on.

Question: @Matt_Hartley, KDE Neon is based on Ubuntu. Is Ubuntu in the list of supported OSs?

E.g. I was planning to give linux + frame.work second chance by installing Ubuntu (though I hate limited UI customization features by Gnome, e.g. cannot easily change header line width, limited scaling options, either too big scale or too small for hdpi monitors, some plugins allow to change it but they are kind of broken and does not work / eliminate all issues / are not stable).

P.S. need some time to move to ubuntu as my work / pet projects are all now on current system (kde neon).

Hi @Ievgen,

I think we’re going to need to get logs from you to get to the bottom of this. This would entail opening a ticket and linking to this thread for context.

We support Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS - this is what we test against and provide ticket support for as we live in this environment. We ask users to follow this guide, especially at step 9 which is the OEM C kernel we need users on.

Now, my understanding is Neon is based on Ubuntu LTS…however, it’s packaging may differ some due to how it diverges from say, Kubuntu. Again, we have never booted Neon onto a Framework Laptop 13 as we’re an incredibly small team.

I encountered the same issue one year later with Ubuntu 24.04. The behavior is identical to what was happening with KDE Neon, but now I am using Ubuntu 24.04. I double-checked the HDMI cable and monitor with another laptop, and both are functioning correctly.

I tried following the Framework guide for Ubuntu 22.04 here: linux-docs/Ubuntu22.04LTS-Manual-Setup-11thGen.md at main · FrameworkComputer/linux-docs · GitHub, but I stopped at the command:

sudo apt install linux-oem-22.04c

I was unsure if running the above command might cause issues with Ubuntu 24.04. I attempted to install the 24.04c version, but it couldn’t be found:

new@new-laptop:~$ sudo apt install linux-oem-24.04c
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package linux-oem-24.04c
E: Couldn't find any package by glob 'linux-oem-24.04c'

I also updated the BIOS to version 3.20 today, but that didn’t resolve the issue.

The only thing that seems to work is swapping the cards (I have the HDMI card connected on the left side of the laptop). If I hot-swap the top (HDMI) with the bottom (USB-C) cards, it starts working again without needing to reboot, though it eventually stops working again. When this happens, I simply hot-swap them again, such that the top is USB-C and the bottom is HDMI, and so on.

I have FRACCHBZ01-3 (3rd Gen) card

Detailed video about this issue: https://youtu.be/oPwoV8pZUWk

I will try opening ticket later…