TB15 Dock Linux Support

I fully agree with this. Just ordered my tb15 today, only realizing that it does not support ubuntu yet later. Fully understand that the team cannot make any concrete announcement yet, but I would appreciate it if they could tell me whether or not I should send back the dock before my two weeks return policy expires. Really don't want to end up with the world's most expensive power adapter.

Do you plan to release "alpha" or "beta" drivers that the community can test and report on? I don't mind to install a special kernel and drivers, test the thing and give feedback.

Driver support will land upstream first. Firmware update support (and there are a LOT of updateable firmwares involved here) will require some vetting before it's publicly available.

I fully agree with this. Just ordered my tb15 today, only realizing that it does not support ubuntu yet later. Fully understand that the team cannot make any concrete announcement yet, but I would appreciate it if they could tell me whether or not I should send back the dock before my two weeks return policy expires. Really don't want to end up with the world's most expensive power adapter.

It'll be on the order of months for full support. We're working with Intel and other parties on support. Unfortunately, because of the newness of so many technologies involved here, there're a lot of gears in motion for support to happen.

My recommendation for now is to utilize a USB 3.0 dock supported by DisplayLink's Linux driver until Type C docks are supported.

Thanks for all the updates. I'm eagerly awaiting them, and will gladly volunteer to test anything...

In the meantime, though, perhaps Ubuntu and Red Hat should be removed from the tech specs on the TB-15 product page?

@joefitz,

thanks for catching that!  Ive forwarded to the team to correct

I installed Kernel 4.6-rc2 and updated the bios to the latest version on my precision 5510. I'm running 2 2560x1440 screens of the display ports right now. 

Observations

- Enabled Thunderbolt Boot support and pre-boot support in the kernel

- Cold boot the laptop with the dock plugged in

- Both displays work. Xrandr sees more outputs when the dock is plugged in, so it probably will be a Xorg limitation for a while that you cannot hot plug.

- Reboot is finicky (kernel panics sometimes), or I get a 60Watt warning. 

- Booting after extended power off is stable, recent shut down not so much.

- Suspend is unreliable with the dock plugged in, reliable without the dock. 

- I see a "0e:00.0 USB controller: ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM1042A USB 3.0 Host Controller", which I suspect is the hub. It doesn't work. 

I'll be installing win10 and updating the thunderbolt firmware, see if it works. 

Reboot is finicky (kernel panics sometimes), or I get a 60Watt warning.

The Intel(R) Thunderbolt(TM) 3 Firmware Update solved that particular problem for me. Apparently it can be installed from DOS if you prefer to just load it on a USB stick instead of going full Windows.

I'm impressed that the displays were working. Ubuntu is probably identifying the dock as a DisplayPort device, which allows the displays to work, but it's not fully Thunderbolt 3 (the software for which doesn't exist yet publicly).

As the initial poster to this thread, I've now exceeded my return period and was not able to return my dock in time. So now I'm stuck with the $300 power brick until support comes to Linux. I'm counting on you Team Sputnik!

Installed the newer firmware, didn't see the 60watt warning afterwards. The updater does not run under DOS, only Windows (winToUSB helped me out here by making an external windows installation), contrary to what the Dell download page says.

I bought the hub for the external monitors, as the HDMI port cannot drive these (the monitors are not HDMI 1.4, so limited to 1080p). The ability to drive two monitors is pretty great, power is also nice.

So enabling pre-boot thunderbolt pcie is what made Linux see the ASMedia chip. However, there are bugs preventing the chip from working unfortunately, I'm getting the following error

xhci_hcd 0000:0e:00.0: Stopped the command ring failed, maybe the host is dead

xhci_hcd 0000:0e:00.0: Host not halted after 16000 microseconds.
xhci_hcd 0000:0e:00.0: Abort command ring failed
xhci_hcd 0000:0e:00.0: HC died; cleaning up
xhci_hcd 0000:0e:00.0: Timeout while waiting for configure endpoint command

If this is somehow fixed then we can at least boot the laptop with the dock plugged in and get full functionality ( not hotplug though). Which would be pretty useful.

I don't suppose there has been any progress since the last update or any kind of ETA? I'd like to buy a project Sputnik laptop, but the dock not working is a deal breaker for me as I have two 4k monitors that I'd want to use with it. One of the higher-end laptops plus dock seemed like the perfect solution for me, but I may go with something else entirely if there's no driver on the horizon.

I'm OK with building my own kernel etc. so long as it's at least possible to get it working for two 4k monitor output.

Unfortunately we dont have any ETA at this time.  This is very important to us for our customers and we are working to address this.

thanks

It may be too late. I purchased a 7710 notebook (i7, 64 GB RAM, etc.), 2 TB3 docks and 4 27 inch 4k monitors (2715Q).

With the TB3 dock not working (I can't even mount USB storage through the dock) to drive the monitors I'll end up returning the whole order (just over $7,000).

The pre-sales folks I spoke to were adamant that this configuration with Ubuntu 16.04 would work.

John

With the TB3 dock not working (I can't even mount USB storage through the dock) to drive the monitors I'll end up returning the whole order (just over $7,000).

For what it's worth, the Precision 7710 also can use the E-dock. Because of the power requirements of the 7710, that may be better for you since the E-dock can provide enough power to that system, whereas the TB15 cannot.

The pre-sales folks I spoke to were adamant that this configuration with Ubuntu 16.04 would work.

I'm really sorry to hear that. I've been trying to get our sales information corrected until the TB15 is supported. It sounds like I need to ping people again.

'The problem with using the E port replicator is that is only has display connections for VGA and DVI. The monitors will only support DP, mDP and HDMI.

There is no way to use the 3 E-port units I have (for M6300 and M6800 systems) to connect to these monitors.

John

What's the model number on your E port replicators? I'm seeing DisplayPort available on all the ones currently available on Dell.com.

For all you guys out there with a TB15 sitting on your desk, I came back to say that I have it working as a display port with a single HD monitor right now. The charging works as well. So if you are interested in putting it to some use instead of it being a brick on your desk, it's possible.

I have a 2016 XPS 13 laptop and the TB15. I have ubuntu 16.04 installed. Charging works right away and my monitor is recognized when I plug in the dock. However, the automatically detected resolution is less than HD for some reason. After some googling, I realized that this can be manually fixed with a few commands. If you have the same problem (strangely lower resolution), execute the following commands:

$ xrandr     (this will list your displays)

$ cvt 1920 1080 60    (to get the mode line. You can enter another resolution also)

$ xrandr --newmode "1920x1080_60.00"  173.00  1920 2048 2248 2576  1080 1083 1088 1120 -hsync +vsync            (just copy and paste the mode line from the previous command)

$ xrandr --addmode DP1-3 1920x1080_60.00    (Note that DP1-3 is the display name from the first command)

After this you can go to the display settings and change the resolution of your monitor. In theory it's possible to do this last step from command line as well, but in my experience it generally doesn't work for unknown reasons. Also when I try to put all these commands into a script they also don't always work. 

Hopefully that helps someone else.

Looking forward to the official drivers!

Cheers