So, the new kernel linked above definitely fixes the problem. Hotplug now works flawlessly! Unfortunately it introduces a fairly minor bug with X11 that seems to cause my modelines to be invalid. I'm running on a retina macbook pro, and I normally downscale the resolution by 50% so that i can actually read text on it, but my xrandr lines in xinitrc now cause it to hang: xrandr --newmode "1440x900_60.00" 106.50 1440 1528 1672 1904 900 903 909 934 -hsync +vsync xrandr --addmode $monitor 1440x900_60.00 xrandr --output $monitor --mode 1440x900_60.00 I'll check to see if these modelines are just invalid, or if this is just some bug related to xrandr. It's clearly got something to do with the kernel though, since it's no longer working. Great work to all the devs who refactored this! One step closer to converting my office to use linux on their MBPs :)