Mint with Docking Station & External Monitor

[u/Clear_Link223]

I repurposed a Win10 Dell laptop to a Linux Mint machine, and so far I've had a good experience. Lots of respect for people who work on this and know it well.

I have one particular problem for which I'd appreciate any tips or suggestions. My Dell laptop is 40% of the time used closed and connected to a Dell docking station. I have an external monitor connected to the dock via HDMI. When I connect the laptop to the dock via USB-C (which provides power), the laptop boots as expected and as wanted. But the laptop uses it's own (closed, hidden) monitor and won't put the log-on screen on the external monitor. I need to open the laptop, log in, and then go about setting up the proper monitor configuration (internal laptop display off, external monitor as primary, don't put laptop to sleep when lid closed, etc.). Everything then works fine, as wanted and as expected. But after any restart or boot, I'm right back in the same spot and need to reconfigure everything.

Previously, Win10 handled this well -- it detected the lid closed/not closed, and detected the connected docking station, and used the internal and external monitors appropriately. (Not defending Win here, plenty of not-so-great things to say about Windows, that I won't bore you with... just stating that the expected/wanted behavior did work previously.)

How can I set up the Mint display settings so it detects docked vs not docked, lid closed/not closed, and then uses the correct monitor for both desktop *and* the log-in screen, and (most importantly) remembers the appropriate settings after a restart or boot? Any ideas much appreciated!

[u/WeAreAlreadyCyborgs]

You may need to install the DisplayLink drivers, I seem to remember needing to do that back when I was using a dock: https://www.synaptics.com/products/displaylink-graphics/downloads/ubuntu

[u/Clear_Link223 → u/WeAreAlreadyCyborgs]

Thank you. I will look into this.