Plugable Thunderbolt 3 dock and no monitors

English Hardware
1

Greetings everyone!

I am attempting to use this docking station: https://plugable.com/products/tbt3-udc1

I have a ThinkPad Carbon X1 6th Gen loaded with Tumbleweed with GNOME. I have turned off the security for Thunderbolt devices and it is authorized when it connects. Running bolt in Terminal shows it connected and I can use the USB ports and the device is charging but I cannot get the connected external monitors to show up. I tried a bunch of different settings for Thunderbolt security in the BIOS to no avail and now I am turning here for some help. I am also talking with the Plugable support as well but they do not officially support Linux with their docking stations. They mentioned something about converting DisplayPort to HDMI and that is what I am doing.

I am wondering if anyone has any experience using Thunderbolt 3 docks with Tumbleweed and how successful it has been along with what I should be looking at to see if it is something on my end. Thanks!

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  1. Update firmwares (BIOS) for laptop and docking station.
  2. Check if needed package is installed: https://software.opensuse.org/package/thunderbolt-user-space
  3. Use Thunderbolt connection, not USB-C, for sockets and cables.
  4. Try it with DP sockets in monitor - without DP-HDMI adapters.

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Other-Linux-Discussions/ThunderBolt-3-Dockingstation-and-Linux/td-p/3671481

3

In consultation with Plugable, I have an active adapter coming today to test out. If that doesn’t work, then I will need to find a monitor that support DisplayPort since I don’t have one here at home. Thanks!