The centerpiece of our home office setup usually consists of a docking station which charges the notebook and acts as a proxy to various peripheral devices.
For reference, I am running Ubuntu 18.04 on a Thinkpad T480. You might not run into the same issues on other devices.
Lately I switched to using the ThinkVision P27h Show archive.org snapshot monitor. The neat thing is that it made my docking station unessential:
- The monitor offers an USB-C Hub which can be connected to the the Thinkpad's USB-C or Thunderbolt socket.
- Peripheral devices (mouse, keyboard, webcam) can be connected to the monitor and are relayed to the notebook.
- The video signal is transmitted over the same cable.
- The notebook is being charged by the monitor over the same cable¹.
My goal is to bring the number of cables connected to my noteobok to a minimum. This makes it very easy to switch between multiple workplaces.
Issues and solutions
Periodical signal loss¹
If you are using the monitor as the single power source, the Thinkpad will will loose its video signal multiple times a day. This is really unnerving as the signal unpredictably tends to jump a few times back and forth between your notebook and the monitor. I tried turning off TLP Show archive.org snapshot or reducing the display's resolution/fps with no effect.
Don't charge your ThinkPad using the ThinkVision monitor. Charging the notebook with a traditional power cable (using the second USB-C/Thunderbold socket) is necessary for a stable long-term use.
Vertical scrolling artifacts
I noticed a sine-shaped artifact when scrolling through text documents or large websites. My window manager "Marco" seems to have caused that issue, I solved it by switching to "Compiz" in Mate Tweak.
Connecting a conventional headset
The monitor does not ship with an AUX socket. You may still connect a headset with your monitor by using an AUX to USB connector.
