The Nexus One Phone-Top
Posted on 09. Jun, 2010 by Bernie Thompson in udlfb
Sven Killig has a sense of where computing is headed: Powerful computers are everywhere, including in your pocket. And he has the skills to push things ahead, to show us glimpses of what’s coming.
Last year, he demoed turning your router into a full-fledged computer.
This year, it’s the Google Nexus One phone as a full computer — with attached external keyboard, mouse, display, and more.
The Nexus One demo is using the udlfb Linux kernel module to talk with the DisplayLink device, and it will work with any DisplayLink device, including Plugable’s.
Note the version of udlfb in the 2.6.34 staging tree unfortunately didn’t work for Sven. So he’s now using the latest udlfb from http://git.plugable.com/, which will likely get merged in for kernel 2.6.36.
Also, he used a dual headed cable to get enough power. A powered hub or a docking station/terminal like the UD-160-A won’t need that — it supplies its own power from AC – all the hardware needed is in the one package.
It’s exciting to have all this open source work come together in interesting demos like this.
There was a question recently why udlfb doesn’t use the same compression technique as the Windows drivers. Among other reasons, one is that the RL compression used by udlfb scales down to devices like the ones Sven has been working on — it’s as light as possible on CPU load, while getting decent compression.
Stepping back, it’s clear Apple (and now Microsoft) are making a mistake by limiting the hardware ecosystem around their devices. Android and the other Linux variants have an opportunity here — and considering the Apple juggernaut, they definitely need every advantage.
Sven’s demos show how powerful these scenarios can be. The hardware is ready. Devices like Plugable’s are designed with these scenarios in mind. Now we need to get the software refined and included in standard distributions, so normal consumers can take advantage of all the possibilities and benefits here.
Google Summer of Code Work Kicks Off
Posted on 24. May, 2010 by Bernie Thompson in UD-160-A
Today is the kickoff of coding work for Google SoC 2010 projects.
We’re very excited about the Google funded project to refine USB multiseat on Linux, with the winning proposal from Lucas Nascimento Ferreira at the Federal University of Parana in Brazil.
In addition to providing mentoring, Plugable is also providing donated hardware for this project. Two Plugable Universal Docking stations with recent enhancements for use as a terminal, were just picked up by Lucas in Brazil today. By next month, we expect to have updated versions of the UGA-125-HUB for terminal use to send down.
For those interested in learning more and potentially following Lucas’ work:
And we’ll post periodic status updates here.
Linux Support For Higher-Res Monitors on Lower-Res DisplayLink Devices
Posted on 21. May, 2010 by Bernie Thompson in udlfb
On Windows and Mac, if you plug in a monitor with a higher resolution than your adapter supports, the driver will automatically fall back to the best common mode between the two.
Linux hasn’t had that support — it would try to set the highest mode the monitor is capable of, often resulting in a black screen. Especially common for the DL-125 chip, with its mode limits of 1440×900/1280×1024.
That’s a shame because the DL-125 chip is a smart choice in many cases – by limiting itself to those lower modes, it stays more consistently within the limits of the USB 2.0 bus, resulting in more consistent performance.
So coinciding with the launch of Plugable’s DisplayLink DL-125 based products (UGA-125 and UGA-125-HUB), changes have been implemented to bring Linux roughly up to the level of Windows and Mac in this area for DisplayLink devices. This also helps devices like the UD-160-A when running on monitors greater than its limit of 1920×1080.
The kernel framebuffer driver udlfb has been enhanced to read the resolution limit from the firmware descriptors of the device, and adhere to it.
On the X server side, we needed a driver which would limit itself to the resulting reduced mode list. Unfortunately, the existing displaylink X server reads EDID directly, and assumes the adapter can do whatever the monitor can do.
We’ve been wanting to get rid of the need for a displaylink-specific X server, and the standard xf86-video-fbdev driver runs with the best existing mode, rather than trying to set a higher one in EDID. So this was a good trigger for converting over.
So xf86-video-fbdev has been enhanced with X Damage protocol support, ported from Roberto’s displaylink driver. This is still a little in-flux from an interface perspective, but from a functional perspective it’s done and fully performant.
So it’s now possible to run with a modified generic fbdev driver, which talks to udlfb, with full performance and without needing defio (although there’s also some good news in the defio space, which will be posted about later).
You can grab the latest udlfb kernel module with a “git clone http://git.plugable.com/webdav/udlfb”. Compile with “make && sudo make install && sudo depmod -a”
And you can grab the latest modified xf86-video-fbdev with a “git clone http://git.plugable.com/webdav/xf86-video-fbdev”. Compile with “./autogen.sh && make && sudo make install”
You’ll need a very recent xorg-macros version (1.4), which in package “sudo apt-get install xutils-dev”
To use the new X server, you must turn on the new “ReportDamage” option to fbdev. Modify your existing xorg conf like this:
Section "Device" Identifier "dl" Driver "fbdev" Option "ReportDamage" "true" Option "fbdev" "/dev/fb0" EndSection
And you should be all set to go. This new X server should work with the existing udlfb in the staging tree of kernel 2.6.31+ for now, as it’s re-using the same original ioctl. But may require modeset changes that are only in 2.6.34+.
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