A lot of the threads are old, so I thought I’d just post one reporting my more recent results.
Systems used:
- Macbook Pro 16" (2019 - Radeon 5500M)
- Startech_com CDP2DP USB-C to Displayport
- Some generic USB-C to USB 3.0 A (AmazonBasics maybe?)
- Gaming PC w/ Geforce GTX 980 Ti - Windows 10. I did the registry hack to default Windows to 2560x1440 (search past threads here for info)
- Linux PC - Asus Q87 board with i5-4590T, onboard graphics. I’m testing various distros and desktops (more on that later)
Peripherals:
- Lenovo L24q-20 (2560x1440 60hz IPS)
- Plugable USB 3.0 hub, plugged into a USB3 port on the KVM
- Webcam
- Audio
- Kinesis Freestyle Edge keyboard
- Logitech K400r wireless keyboard - unified receiver on KVM hid port
- USB mouse - on KVM hid port
I have a mix of cables from L1 and Tripp-Lite (from my past KVM), no specific problems running at 2560x1440x60-67hz
Each of the systems seems to be working fine and resuming from sleep after giving them a few seconds for monitor detection.
Here’s a few gotchas:
- The mac moves windows to the lower left corner and resizes them to something around 1600x1000. I guess I’ll need to find some 3rd party window manager to tile these for me
- The mac seems to wake from the mouse (plugged to the HID port) but not the keyboard on the USB3 hub. Not a big deal
- The mac takes the longest to resume and detect the monitor - close to 10 seconds
- The Kinesis Freestyle Edge won’t work on the HID ports. It reports as 3 separate HID devices for some reason.
Here’s the Kinesis’s USB topology:
/: Bus 03.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci_hcd/15p, 480M
|__ Port 4: Dev 2, If 0, Class=Hub, Driver=hub/4p, 480M
|__ Port 4: Dev 34, If 0, Class=Hub, Driver=hub/4p, 480M
|__ Port 1: Dev 35, If 0, Class=Hub, Driver=hub/4p, 480M
|__ Port 1: Dev 36, If 2, Class=Human Interface Device, Driver=usbhid, 12M
|__ Port 1: Dev 36, If 0, Class=Human Interface Device, Driver=usbhid, 12M
|__ Port 1: Dev 36, If 1, Class=Human Interface Device, Driver=usbhid, 12M
How does this compare to my old solution?
I’m happy to finally have 4 ports so I can run all my systems in less space.
Previously I was using the Tripp Lite B004-DP2UA2-K. It also had problems with the Kinesis keyboard so I used a similar setup with a USB 2 hub to handle all the stuff I needed. Because it had EDID persistence systems switched slightly faster, but the KVM itself would also hang once every few weeks. I had to unplug everything to power cycle it, then use a dumb keyboard and some magic keystrokes to set it back into USB hub compatibility mode.
So about Linux desktops…
One of the reasons I was so eager to set this up was for testing different desktop environments. Wayland compositors tend to behave nicely in VMs with the QXL driver, but the experience varies a lot on hardware. So far I have tried:
- Fedora 33 Workstation - default Gnome setup has a Wayland compositor on my Intel integrated graphics. It works great, and can handle KVM switching
- Fedora rawhide (which will eventually be 34) with KDE Plasma - bad stuff happens when the monitor is switched off. The logged in user session in “VT2” goes blank, and the SDDM on “VT1” already shows a user logged in. I’ll be digging into this more to make sure bugs are fixed.