I bought a ThinkVision monitor from Lenovo last week. It got delivered today, so immediately I set it up and plugged it in. But it just wouldn’t get detected on my Linux laptop! I changed the cable, I was using a dock, so I also changed the dock, nothing! Then I checked the product support page, and it mentioned drivers, and only Windows was mentioned! So I started panicking, is this thing not supported on Linux?
Then I recalled I had a spare mini-PC around, so tried with it. It had Windows 11 installed, the monitor was detected and the mini-PC worked just fine. But after that, when I tried the monitor again with my Linux laptop, it was now working without issues!
So I am wondering what could be the reason for this? Or was it just fluke, and I was just unlucky first time around?
As always with stuff like this it’s an arm chair spitball but I’d wager it came with some outdated firmware and when you plugged it into the Win machine it “got the update.”
If you had run fwupd on Linux you might have got the same result, i.e. it would have worked.
Cue jokes about Windows “ease of use” == doing stuff without consent.
I guess that makes sense, I was thinking something like that, but I just couldn’t imagine what could it be for something as mundane as a productivity monitor
I recently got a new monitor from Dell. It is supposed to do 100hz but will not work in Linux. I’m gonna try plugging it in to a Windows box and hope for a similar result.
Depends on what you mean by “not detected.” Have you checked dmesg to see if it’s detected or are you basing this off of like a display setup panel or something?
I checked just now, now my monitor is working, but nothing is in dmesg. Come to think of it, I have never seen monitors in dmesg.
By detected I mean the display application for my desktop (XFCE), or xrandr.
EDIT:
$ xrandr | grep -E '\<connected'
eDP-1 connected primary 1920x1200+0+1080 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 288mm x 180mm
DP-1 connected 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 597mm x 336mm
Well it’s a tad too late to really check things but the XFCE display panel won’t show much if it’s non-functional or not identifying to the machine as a display. xrandr would likely not see it either if it’s an unknown device. However fwupd (so long as the system sees -something- should be able to spot it and so long as the firmware update exists and your machine is fully updated it should be able to push the fw to the device which should then see it identify as a display.
That said the GPU may be side stepping any notice in dmesg since it’s a middle man in the situation. So that might be useless and ignore the tired old man heh.
Well it’s all spitball as I said. I’m not sure how your Dock is seen and passes things to the system if you encounter this again I’d first check dmesg to see if anything pops up when you plug in or if you have a GPU util check that to see if it sees an unknown device plugged in. Last (or first who am I to tell you how to live) you can try fwupdmgr get-devices and see what it sees.
I know firmware updates are pretty slick these days for non-Win/Mac but you never know if a devices FW has been acquired and added to the list yet.
Thanks for the suggestions! I’ll remember this. This laptop has an Intel iGPU, and my dock is a USB-C dock from UGREEN that I have used for couple of years with different monitors (including a much older ThinkVision). Actually come to think of it, that old ThinkVision, while it does get detected, it sometimes does funky stuff with the resolution.
np, hopefully it pans out for someone but I’ve done enough spitballing to know some times you hit the wrong person/device and end up in detention.
I kinda figured the dock would be some USB passthrough so I figured it would show something in dmesg but “One never knows until they knows.” That said I’d also try a direct connection if possible for max chance of fwupd seeing the right thing…because “One never knows until they knows.” (The #1 crappy thing about text comms is wondering if the “accent” or mispronunciation jokes land.)
Sadly, can’t do direct, one of those “modern” thin Dell XPS that was forced on me from work. The thing has exactly two USB-C ports, that’s it! I’m also supposed to visit project locations from time to time with this It’s a little over 3 yr old now, and dies when I start a longish compilation. I guess I should be thankful that I can use Linux on my work laptop
Well it’s not mandatory, just a best if you can situation. Even if the machine had outs other than “C/ThunderDolt” it doesn’t mean the monitor has that as an input heh. It always seems a machine has X output and the monitor has Y and Z input so it’s a war of adapters and bad workarounds.
