Before I wanted this for myself, I was completely unaware of all the nuances that go into the building of a quality home office. From data speed, to connection type, to the type of processor, memory and screen quality, you need to think about everything. If not, you might buy a bunch of stuff and you'll have 2 or 3 parallel screens showing the same thing.
So first of all, you must chose your PC right. That is crucial. Actually we will focus on laptops here as in case of a PC, what you simply need is a powerful video card with enough monitor ports and that is it.
So, in case of laptops, if you wanted to future proof your system, but also wanted to make it simple, I would only go with Intel based laptops. There is USB-C 4.0 coming to newer laptops, but it's 40gbps speed is not transferable to DisplayLink capabilities. So even with the latest AMD Ryzen AI 9 laptops, you won't be able use one single dongle, to bring out quality image onto multiple moniotrs, but to also be attached to multiple peripherals.
If you don't know what I am talking about, let me clear you.
- There is USB-C port with DisplayLink protocol, to transfer an image, that uses way more CPU/GPU, then a thunderbolt port. It has most often 5 or 10gpbps max speed. Often we can find 2 or more on laptops not having a Thunderbolt port.
- Then there is Thunderbolt, Intel's native port of 40Gbps speed multi transfer protocol and we can also find at least 2 on most high end laptops. It requires for it's functioning way less CPU/GPU load.
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| The Display Link capability - that you can often see over USB-C ports. |
So, if you wanted to get eye-friendly, you must also choose 2 quality monitors. I would recommend either a 24 or 27 inch screens, that has 2, 2.5 or 4k resolution. At least 75hz vertical refreshing rate, but 100 or more would be even better. Low blue light and AntiFlicker features and a matt screen surface. If you worked with text, writing, coding, home labs, screen clarity and screen sharpness will keep your eyes fresh. The more you must force your eyes to read a character or the more you must blink to reduce eye fatigue, the least productive you'll be. So buying a cheap 27 inch screen with HD1080P, just because it is 27", won't do any good for you.
So if you wanted to run 2 24" or 27" inch screens at 2K or 2.5K at 100Hz, well, here is the first hiccup, if you chose only Display link/USB-C for your laptop. You cannot, due to limited transfer speeds and dock speeds !!! Each display needs around 9.3 Gbps raw bandwidth speed, while your usb-c has 10gbs max!
So imagine, that if you had this limitation, but in the meantime, you wanted to plug in an external HDD, charge your phone and use your keyboard and mouse on the dock too, you would be slowed down drastically ! What if you wanted to charge your laptop in the meantime, but have internet connection going through that same cable too !
Now you understand your data transfer rate limitation importance.
When you have a thunderbolt port and a thunder bolt dock, you arrive anywhere and you plug in one single usb-c thunderbolt cable !
When you have a display link pc with a display link alt mode docker, well, for full functioning, you might plug in your keyboard, mouse, RJ45 into your PC and the usb-c is used only for the 2 screens, but even in this case, you won't be able to run them at 100Hz !
So now, there is the docking device. You must choose your monitors well, because due to my experience, docking devices that can support Thunderbolt 3/4 and running 2 monitors at high refresh rates, while supporting 130w or more laptop charging, coming rarely with 2 HDMI ports. Often 1 HDMI and 2 or more Display ports. This simply means, that you have to add 20 or 30bucks more to a similarly capable only HDMI monitor price. Choose a monitor that supports display port !
Then there is the compatibility, flickering, transfer issues, latency, firmware updates, number of ports and more. I highly recommend to buy the same brand of laptop with the same brand of docking device.
Asus has the Thunderbolt Master 5 or the Tripple 4 Dock. Lenovo has the Thinkpad Thunderbolt 4 with 100 or 230W charging. Dell has the WD19TBS and the WD22TB4.
Look around amazon if you wanted, to find 3rd party devices. Look at the comments and you'll see that there are always some comments about incompatibility. You might not have issues, or you might ! Having two monitors and a laptop, than a docking device giving you hell. Go for the obvious choice !
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What laptop would I choose ? Intel came out with Thunderbolt 5 already, whopping 80 to 120gbps transfer rates. Meaning, if docking stations catch up, you might be able to use 3 27"/32" 4k /8k monitors at 75 to 100Hz refresh rates. The importance of this in case of eye strain is enormous. Pixel density, high hertz, and picture quality is essential.
If battery life, size and money weren't an issue, I would go with the HP ZBook Fury G11 16" - NVIDIA RTX 4000 Ada, 128gigs of ram. It would be around 6000€, having the latest GEN14 I9 14900HX and an RTX4000 with 12gb of vram. Probably with like 1h battery life at heavy works with it's 95Wh battery but 230w charger !
Then at lower budgets, There is the Thinkpad Gen13 Carbon X1, what has also Thunderbolt 5. It comes with the latest Core Ultra 7, so battery life will be way more elevated. I would prefer this one actually. It is exactly half the price, it has half the memory, but 64gbs is more than enough, especially at 8553 speeds. It has integrated graphics, so no GPU will be draining the battery and way lighter. Extremely solid device. If you do only some office work, writing, research and would not need heavy duty specs, there is the latest Galaxy book, what if I am not mistaken, also comes with Thunderbolt 5. It has only 16Gb ram, so I would for sure not use that device with Win11.
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So the final verdict, while also posing 2 questions. What did I choose, did I regret it, what about the OS ?
I went with a budget PC. A DELL Inspirion 14 Plus 7440. It has very limited ports, so I already have a USB dock with it. However, it has the Thunderbolt 4 port, so using one single port with a docking device is charging my PC, splitting my screen output to three, giving me internet, mouse and keyboard too.
It has the GEN 14 2023'Q4 I9 Ultra CPU / 32gb of Lpddr5 6400. This is where the problems start. For me at least. This CPU is way too new to make any linux distro running on it with zero hiccups. I don't like suffering and hiccups, incompatibilities, freezing and unexpected crashes, slowing down and so. On my R5 5600G Desktop, I have this habit of running Debian 12 with a solidity of the best Tank you've ever seen. I virtualize daily, using a lot of scripts in my VMs, I often install and uninstall modules to test out stuff, do use Gimp, basic apps like libre office, mailing and browsing, with tons of tabs open and 7-8 apps running in the meantime of the VMs. It never ever crashes, stops or does anything unexpected. Never !!!
I installed Ubuntu on my new laptop. Tinkered around with, tried to find a solution. Had loads of issues, out of the box. Then tried Fedora. It worked for an hour, then started having issues. Then finally tried just in case, Debian Trixie. All of these distros had major issues of software crashing, some software installing so slowly, that for instance VMware Pro took 90minutes, while it's function was instantaneous. The next article, I will describe all the issues and solutions I tried. Then, went for the obvious choice. Win11, that did not want to install either. So I had found out, that I need to pre-install the RST driver, but the good one and not even the recommended one, but the latest one. Then of course, I needed to install all the drivers, do all the windows updates, all the mess I dislike about windows. Then of course I wrote a script to delete, uninstall and disable all the mess windows installs and proposes out of the box. I have a windows family key booted on the Bios, so it basically now works fully functionally. Except the WIFI. The Dell updater did not do a good enough job, to find the latest update, so I had to pull it down manually from Dells website.
This is to say, if you wanted a high end PC with linux running on it with zero hiccups, choose a Core I7 VPRO or CORE I9 probably going with either Gen12 or Gen13.
I never ever had found a way, to run ubuntu with it's GNOME on any of my PCs. Freezes, shutdowns and unexpected actions were always and always present. Running Debian, Fedora, Mint, Manjaro or even ARch ? Well Zero issues !
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