Connecting an external display to Asahi Linux with DisplayLink

As of now (August 2025) Asahi Linux does not support USB-C display output on the M1/M2 Macs that it supports. This leaves those Mac models that don’t have a dedicated HDMI port, such as the Macbook Air M1/M2, without an option to connect an external display.

I’m on a Macbook Air M2 and this sucks. It’s my only real pain point. So time for a workaround.

How about an external USB graphics card? (Not a passthrough adapter, a full GPU). It turns out this niche thing exists, most famously in certain Dell laptop docking stations that, as a feature, can support more displays via the docking station than the laptop’s GPU is capable of outputting to.

The chipset behind this is called DisplayLink, by Synaptics.

DisplayLink driver on Linux

Synaptics offers proprietery drivers for Ubuntu and there is a community effort to re-package these into rpms, with support for Fedora 42 aarch64 in the latest releases on GitHub.

Installation is easy:

• download the rpm (fedora-42-displaylink-1.14.10-1.github_evdi.aarch64.rpm worked for me on Asahi Linux Fedora 42)
• make sure you have the free + nonefree rpm fusion repos enabled for dependencies
• dnf install ./fedora-42-displaylink-1.14.10-1.github_evdi.aarch64.rpm

After installation check that the displaylink-driver.service is enabled (dnf enable --now displaylink-driver.service) and that the evdi driver is loaded (lsmod | grep evdi and if needed modprobe evdi).

You should now see additional evdi cards:

$ ls -la /dev/dri/by-path/
platform-206400000.gpu-card -> ../card1
platform-206400000.gpu-render -> ../renderD128
platform-evdi.0-card -> ../card0
platform-evdi.1-card -> ../card3
platform-evdi.2-card -> ../card4
platform-evdi.3-card -> ../card5
platform-soc:display-subsystem-card -> ../card2

After attaching the display, you should be able to press SUPER + P and extend or mirror the display.

(Just to say, this worked for me on the default Wayland/Kwin/KDE Plasma 6 setup of Asahi Fedora Linux 42. No changes needed).

The hardware choice

For me, with the wrong DisplayLink adapter nothing worked despite extenisve troubleshooting - and with the right hardware everything worked instantly.

• bad hardware choice: This is the adapter that I first tried and that I did NOT get to work: ABLEWE B0D1C7RM1G usb2hdmi-DE-FBA - don´t buy
• good hardware choice: This is the adapter that WORKS WELL for me: Dell DA-100
  • only the old DA-100 variant with USB-A connector seems to have DisplayLink. Don’t buy the successor version with USB-C connector.

So, how is it?

With the Dell DA-100 (attached to a regular USB-A to USB-C adapter) and the displaylink-rpm, I’m now getting FullHD HDMI output on Asahi Linux on my Macbook Air M2.

The performance isn’t too awesome, but it’s better than I expected and certainly good enough for day to day work in non-graphics/3D applications or when I need to attach to a projector for a presentation.

(I still have to try and see how well it works for a 3D heavy application like Blender - probably not too good?).

While certainly not made for gaming, it’s actually good enough to play SuperTuxCart in FullHD on an external monitor.