Hello everybody,
I am interested in Librem13 or Librem15 and I would like to use it (when at home) with the lid closed and in a dual-screen configuration with two monitors.
The first thing that came to my mind to achieve this was using a Port Replicator / Docking Station.
Can anybody recommend one or has some success stories?
Thanks in advance.
Regards.
As far as I can tell, there are not many options to connect librem15 up to dual monitors, it does not appear to be possible to connect displays via the usb-c port.
That leaves the usb ports and the single hdmi port.
I tested a USB3 docking station that uses “displaylink” to connect monitors via the USB port. To get this to work I needed to install the binary blob drivers on pureos (displaylink.com/downloads/ubuntu)
I got it to work, however the drivers used a lot of CPU, and I quickly ran into issues with one application that I use (https://support.displaylink.com/knowledgebase/articles/589218-mac-osx-hardware-acceleration-support-with-display)
The performance however seemed acceptable, if you don’t plan to do anything more than editing documents…
Perhaps a displaylink dock would be perfectly acceptable if you are running windows as the host, however I have not tested that.
So I was looking into alternatives, and found that there are devices that take two monitors and merge them together as if they were a single big screen, and allows for them to be connected to a single VGA port. (for example the so called Matrox DualHead2Go Digital)
I am hoping I can just use the dualhead2go, and get a hdmi -> vga converter, i’ve ordered it but have not tested it yet.
If it works I believe I can use fakexrandr to split the “single” big monitor back into two. I’m not sure on the options if you are using wayland.
Perhaps I missed an entirely obvious way to connect two monitors to librem15?
Update to my previous post, I have not been able to get the Matrox DualHead2Go Digital, to work with the HDMI input, a simple email to matrox and they responded saying it will not work 
So, I have a solution that works alright for me…
I got a USB 2.0 displaylink adapter that works with the opensource ugl driver. Specifically: http://www.win-star.com/eshop/goods.php?id=90
I use that for one monitor, and the hdmi out for the other monitor.
It doesn’t seem to use an obscene amount of CPU like I noticed with the closed source driver, and actually seems to work acceptably.
However I did have issues getting it to work initially, and needed to make my own xorg.conf … but I now have it working perfectly fine, other than the mouse flickering during animation on the screen, which I suppose can be fixed somehow…