after using a lenovo usb c dock and having a lot of display problems. its a displaylink chip. and random disconnects (doesn’t happen on my windows work laptop). i was wondering what are the best supported docks for linux?
in my current situation the dock has the displays, ethernet, keyboard/mouse and audio connected to it so i can easily switch between my work laptop and my desktop pc.
I have a Kensington SD5700T and a CalDigit TS4. Both of those are USB 4/Thunderbolt 4 docs and they work fine under Fedora. They support 2 monitors out via USB C or a combination of USB C/HDMI.
I’d recommend the CalDigit dock though as the Kensington one has developer coil whine so if I’m not using the linux laptop I power it down and unplug the laptop to stop the annoying sound. The TS4 has no such issues.
I have to use Windows because of the docking station problems with Lenovo…
The only feasible workaround for me was to use the HDMI out for the display and the station for the rest but that defeats the purpose of said station.
I did get it somewhat working by switching to Ubuntu in combination with the Ubuntu display link driver. But it’s never stable
I’m using an Anker dock with a Lenovo laptop running Ubuntu. It works great and will handle two additional displays.
Probably Thunderbolt docks are better. Should also provide better performance as Display Link compresses the video stream on your CPU before sending over USB.
Not a direct answer to your question, but I have a Dell TB16 dock. It does not work well - it sporadically fails to output display to my monitors and it does not charge my non-dell personal laptop (a Lenovo Yoga 730). However, it works great for my Dell work laptop running windows…
Just adding this Incase you see it on sale or something - take it for what it’s worth!
The Dell dock works great with my framework after I installed their display link drivers (proprietary blob unfortunately).
The display link drivers are the problem for me. Makes everything so unstable.
Its the worst for Linux, but works great if you need video out on an android device without video output.
Which lenovo dock were you using? I was recently looking at getting the lenovo USBC gen2 (40AS) dock which I am pretty sure uses displayport alt mode and not displaylink.
This depends more on your individual hardware; if your device has thunderbolt 3 or 4, you should go with a thunderbolt dock. I’m using one from HP, probably the predecessor of this one (because mine is flatter): https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/pdp/hp-thunderbolt-dock-120w-g2
Works pretty much without any extra drivers while the maintenance of my gf’s displaylink-based dock is a pain… Displaylink only distributes packages for the Ubuntu LTS versions, so if you are on sth with newer kernels (e.g. PopOS) you have to hold the kernel packages etc. Not fun. Will move her to arch soon.
