Review on Dell WD15 Dock 4K with 180W Adapter, USB-C, (Model: 450-AEUO, 7FJ4J, 4W2HW), Black, Dual Display by Christian Young

Finally a dock that runs Linux, USB-C and charges my computer. I tried 4 separate docking stations, Dell TB15 and TB16 and two from Plugable. TB15/16 were really terrible products. Each had their own issues: video disconnects, Ethernet speed drops, garbled audio ports, USB disconnects, overheating, weird conflicts with strong WiFi signal. Almost everything that could go wrong has happened at these docks. The plug-in docks actually work *wonderfully* and have great customer service, but their products skew compatibility with the XPS 15 9550's ability to charge via USB cables. Their docks, which claim to be Linux compatible, worked great, but I had to leave the computer unplugged. I wish I could try this dock first. Let's get to WD15. I am using Ubuntu 17.04 with 4.12 kernel. All BIOS updates have been applied, which is critical for USB-C/Thunderbolt features to work on these latest Dell devices. In most cases, this means installing Windows to apply updates. While BIOS updates can be applied from DOS, Dock updates MUST be performed from Windows. So expect to have Windows 10 installed (I recommend Rufus install it on an external drive) for things to work. With all the updates applied, this thing works AMAZING. I only power one external display but use almost all ports: HDMI or DisplayPort work fine, I used 4 USB ports, front audio out and ethernet. Everything works, no drivers or special downloads are required for the Linux dock itself. I have an internal and an external display running both nVidia (with nvidia-381 package) and Intel graphics (with drivers installed from 01.org). Aside from all the usual ways of getting something to work on Linux, this dock works great. The sound was absolutely stable (almost a miracle). Even with the power consumption of my XPS 9550, charging via USB-C works. It doesn't seem to have the same charging issues as plug-in docks. The dock even seems to work well with Sleep and Resume. Although sometimes I have to unplug/replug after a reboot. Sometimes the second display doesn't wake up immediately, but a quick hop to the display panel or F8 cycling through the display options fixes the issue for the duration of the session. The only small problem I had is the external USB. Hard drives seem to constantly start and stop when connected to USB ports and the computer is in sleep mode or unplugged. It doesn't appear to be a Linux issue as it occurs even when the computer is not connected to a network. For now I just plug it in after the computer wakes up or when I need to do a backup.