DisplayLink plugs into Linux
The DisplayLink USB display system, which allows Windows and Mac systems to drive multiple displays connected via USB 2.0 using custom lossless compression technology, is coming to Linux. The release, by DisplayLink, of libdlo, an LGPL 2.1 licensed library, will allow Linux developers to discover and connect to DisplayLink devices. This is the first step in developing application level support, such as X servers and other graphic platforms.
DisplayLink has been appearing in a number of devices, including small bus powered LCD displays, projectors, laptop docks and standalone graphics dongles to plug in DVI and VGA monitors. The libdlo driver should allow Linux systems to connect with all these devices; the supported functionality is listed in the documentation, as a capability to enumerate and connect to a DisplayLink device, set the screen mode for the device and to draw, copy and scrap rectangles to that screen.
The source code is available from DisplayLink.org, which currently redirects to a page on the FreeDesktop.org wiki. There is also a twitter feed for @libdlo for news and other updates.
(djwm)