I'm running Mint Cinnamon 18.3 on a Dell Inspiron 17 5000 laptop. I have an external Samsung monitor connected to it via a HDMI cable. This setup has worked well for a year. Lately The HDMI port has started to malfunction. I was losing the monitor and by touching the cable near the connector the monitor whould reappear. I know it is the port because when I plug the cable and monitor on another PC it works OK.
My question is the following. I see on Amazon USB to HDMI adapter. You plug the adapter in a USB port and plug your HDMI cable into it and it will power the monitor.
But will that work with Linux Mint?
Thank you
HDMI port broken. What about USB to HDMI adapter?
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HDMI port broken. What about USB to HDMI adapter?
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
Re: HDMI port broken. What about USB to HDMI adapter?
Not all will work, make sure there are working drivers for it for Linux, ideally Ubuntu 16.04 (which your Mint 18.3 is based on). I never used one so I cannot give recommendations.
Re: HDMI port broken. What about USB to HDMI adapter?
It's most likely a DisplayLink device. Just search on the forum for DisplayLink and you'll see a fair number of users reporting trouble, so I'd advise against it unless you have no other option. VGA to HDMI or DisplayPort to HDMI converters are generally better & don't need any drivers.
A notable exception are USB-C devices, these work fine as they don't contain a DisplayLink chip but use the video signal provided by USB-C (if it is internally wired to your GPU, which is usually the case in laptops.)
A notable exception are USB-C devices, these work fine as they don't contain a DisplayLink chip but use the video signal provided by USB-C (if it is internally wired to your GPU, which is usually the case in laptops.)
Registered Linux User #528502
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Feel free to correct me if I'm trying to write in Spanish, French or German.
Re: HDMI port broken. What about USB to HDMI adapter?
+1 on VGA > HDMI adapter over USB > HDMI.
Re: HDMI port broken. What about USB to HDMI adapter?
That's interesting, I hadn't heard of those. Would I be correct in thinking that you'd still be limited by the number of available pipes? i.e. I can physically connect up to four displays to my Dell Inspiron 1525, however it has only 2 pipes; therefore I can only use two displays at once.
Dell Inspiron 1525 - LM17.3 CE 64-------------------Lenovo T440 - Manjaro KDE with Mint VMs
Toshiba NB250 - Manjaro KDE------------------------Acer Aspire One D255E - LM21.3 Xfce
Acer Aspire E11 ES1-111M - LM18.2 KDE 64 ----… Two ROMS don't make a WRITE …
Toshiba NB250 - Manjaro KDE------------------------Acer Aspire One D255E - LM21.3 Xfce
Acer Aspire E11 ES1-111M - LM18.2 KDE 64 ----… Two ROMS don't make a WRITE …
Re: HDMI port broken. What about USB to HDMI adapter?
I don't know what pipes are in this case, but yes, many GPUs are physically limited to 2 or 3 screens (3 on modern Intel hardware, 2 in the past. Some AMD hardware can drive up to 6.)
EDIT: GPU engineers seem to call this 'pipe' a CRTC and you can see which of them can drive which ports using:
EDIT: GPU engineers seem to call this 'pipe' a CRTC and you can see which of them can drive which ports using:
Code: Select all
xrandr --verbose
Registered Linux User #528502
Feel free to correct me if I'm trying to write in Spanish, French or German.
Feel free to correct me if I'm trying to write in Spanish, French or German.
Re: HDMI port broken. What about USB to HDMI adapter?
USB interfaces have a limited number of endpoints, connections to those are called pipes, I'm assuming the references was to that.