Dell is giving zero information on the status of the linux drivers, apart a vague "we're working on it". In my book, it means there is a chance no progress is made and there is a chance the support is eventually dropped

We are the first (and to my knowledge only) ones requesting to Intel Alpine Ridge support on Linux. We're limited in what information we can give about future support at this point (basically we can't say what will be available until it is public and ships), but I can say that Thunderbolt 3 support on Linux is important to us, and Thunderbolt 3 dock support specifically has not been forgotten and is actively being worked on. 

because there's only a bunch of us.

It's more than just a few enthusiasts. :-) We get that docking is important to a lot of developers (and some enthusiasts), and that's not lost on us.

I also have a brand new Dell XPS 13 and the TB15 dock. Mine doesn't even fully work on Windows yet... 

More importantly though, I would love to have it working on linux. I think everybody is wondering why such secrecy regarding this project? Why not at least give a meaningful ETA? Do we have to wait in the order of days, weeks or months? The official release of Ubuntu 16.04 is coming up shortly as is the apparent release of the new XPS developer edition, will the dock drivers be ready for either of these two events?

I think Jared laid this out well.  To reiterate, we are hearing a lot of requests regarding the dock, some even coming from users within Dell :)  

We are working with the various parties to make this happen but it may take a little while.  For us it couldn't come soon enough :)

Personally I'm not too much concerned with status updates or precise view over the progress. The only thing that bothers me, and I am fully aware this is not something Sputnik controls or influences, is the Dell sales policy on the TB15 dock. IMO , given driver and kernel support are still under very heavy dev, it shouldn't have been a selectable option on the site for building and purchasing systems. Or, if it had to be listed there, some caveat explaining the current severely limited functional status (i.e. disclaimer) would have been informative.

Like I said, I know you guys are hard at work, and I'm sure this thing will be a top notch linux dock setup, maybe THE top setup, once it's operational. Nevertheless, the product rollout by the corporate sales staff, or whoever drives these decisions, should be subject to criticism.

Thanks for the honest answers, Barton and Jarred.

Like you guys, I want this dock yesterday :)

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.

In any cases, I share the same feelings as sk3l on this: you guys rock to work on this project and at the end, this dock will change the setup of a lot of people for the best.

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