Add SMSC x.org drivers for USB3 display adapters

[Piotr Maliński]

There are some USB3 docking stations or USB3 to HDMI (or alike) adapters based on UFX7000 chipset by SMSC - http://www.smsc.com/Technologies/ViewSpan/UFX7000/Download

I have one adapter branded by Gembird. Compared to DisplayLink - there are drivers and it even can work on Linux (DisplayLink drivers exist only for older USB2 chipsets). There are some problems.
- The Xorg driver is available only on SMSC website
- you won'tdownload it untill they let you in, and to do that you have to give a lot of valid company data and hope they will accept it
- their packages are dated from 2011 so may become incompatible with modern systems

The release notes mention Ubuntu LTS 10.04 and Centos/RHEL 6 as tested and supported. You get RPMs and DEBs:
xf86-video-smsc_1.0.2.1-20111206_amd64.deb
xf86-video-smsc_1.0.2.1-20111206_i386.deb
viewspan_1.0.2.1-1_amd64.deb
viewspan_1.0.2.1-1_i386.deb

I managed it to work from LTS LiveCD. On my current 13.04 desktop xrandr prevents it from working (release notes point out that their viewspan is incompatible with it) even when having Xinerama config in xorg.conf (the same thing worked from the LiveCD that does not have xrandr).

So it would be nice if big Ubuntu would try to talk to them about making their drivers more available and more friendly with modern systems (and XRandr for plug and play without xorg.conf hacking).

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

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[penalvch (penalvch)]

Piotr Maliński, this bug was reported a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue? If so, could you please test for this with the latest development release of Ubuntu? ISO images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ .

If it remains an issue, could you please run the following command in the development release from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal), as it will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report:

apport-collect -p linux REPLACE-WITH-BUG-NUMBER

If reproducible, could you also please test the latest upstream kernel available (not the daily folder) following https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds ? It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue. Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please comment on which kernel version specifically you tested. If this bug is fixed in the mainline kernel, please add the following tags:
kernel-fixed-upstream
kernel-fixed-upstream-VERSION-NUMBER

where VERSION-NUMBER is the version number of the kernel you tested. For example:
kernel-fixed-upstream-v3.13-rc6

This can be done by clicking on the yellow circle with a black pencil icon next to the word Tags located at the bottom of the bug description. As well, please remove the tag:
needs-upstream-testing

If the mainline kernel does not fix this bug, please add the following tags:
kernel-bug-exists-upstream
kernel-bug-exists-upstream-VERSION-NUMBER

As well, please remove the tag:
needs-upstream-testing

Once testing of the upstream kernel is complete, please mark this bug's Status as Confirmed. Please let us know your results. Thank you for your understanding.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for linux (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]