Hello everyone, I’m from China, I bought a framework this year, and installed fedora37 on it. I’ve been using it for half a year, and it works great! I really like it.
Recently I noticed that framework comes out with an Ethernet Expansion Card (Framework | Ethernet Expansion Card) From the pictures it looks delicate, but I think it’s a bit expensive and I need to go through Fedex Shipping such a small part to China also requires a lot of freight, and the international freight entry will be affected by China’s covid19 control and it will take me a long time to receive it.
So I would like to ask you to help me recommend a docking station with a Gigabit Ethernet cable interface, suitable for framework and linux, I saw someone in the community mentioned the Belkin brand, I don’t know if it is suitable for me? Thanks.
Dock, Coolermaster EG 200 fsink kernel works with a 2.5
Tested with Fedora by a friend of mine - simply insert desired PCI card into the case - bingo, works. Again, tested with Fedora…but use a server quality Intel NIC.
Thunderbolt, plug it in, server level PCI NIC into it. 
I haven’t tested the ethernet connection in Linux (but do use the SSD, USB, HDMI, etc.) and really love my hub from Acasis:
I would also check out the USB-C/Thunderbolt Dock Megathread thread. A lot of useful information. I am in the market also for some new Thunderbolt Dock solutions. I currently have the Lenovo Thunderbolt 3 Dock (Original/Gen1) once the firmware was fully update everything worked including power delivery, only issue is wake from extended screen lock or sleep (4+ hours). So it works well, but having to unplug the cable and plug it in to get it to wake up the displays is annoying.
Still unsure what direction I want to go in. May actually go with @Matt_Hartley suggestion since I may go to a three or four display solution. Outside of that the Plugable ecosystem seemed interesting, reasonably priced, and according to some in the thread reliable with the Framework including with wake ups.
Definitely check the mega thread as well. But yeah, my suggestion has been vetted and does work with Fedora.
@Matt_Hartley @Zuominglang I actually own an eg200 funnily enough and use Fedora. I can confirm myself that it is an amazing bit of kit and has several advantages compared to other enclosures. I wouldn’t call it a dock tho, I’d say a dock is smaller. Although given that thunderbolt docks aren’t really any less expensive than a dedicated enclosure, it really is worth getting an enclosure instead of a dock for greater flexibility.
@GhostLegion I have been considering this EGPU as an option, so I was wondering 1) do you use this directly plugged or is it daisy chained to a dock? 2) In either situation how is the display wakeup, i.e. does it detect displays after screen locks, sleep, suspend, hibernate etc., in a reliable manner. 3) How does it handle hotplugging? or do you need to boot with it plugged in for the EGPU to work properly? 4) How many monitors are you running on it?
@nadb I use it directly plugged into my laptop. I couldn’t tell you how it detects external displays after wake from suspend/hibernate as I don’t use an external display (spent enough money for now, it’s on the list). However I can tell you that it handles hotplugging very well, the dock is detected fine after boot and even the GPU shows up under PCI devices in terminal. No need to boot with it plugged in. It doesn’t help that my current GPU is unsupported (A770) so I can’t really test the things I want to test like performance.
@GhostLegion thanks for the detailed response. Trying to buy a good thunderbolt option is like readin tea leaves. My Issue is I already have two 1920x1080 displays and am now looking to get a 4K display to smack in the middle so the side ones can be used exclusively for static tasks, like a document reader, monitoring tools, or a browser window open to cockpit, leaving the center one for work along with the built in display. While I know that the Alder Lake series supports up to 4 displays with the IGPU getting a dock that can handle that is an issue, so an EGPU becomes an option since the displays are tied directly to the External GPU. I might get one just to test it out. Thanks again.
@Richard_Lees Although you call it a “hub”, I believe I found it on the JD.com (【阿卡西斯CM073】阿卡西斯 Type-C扩展坞 M.2 NVMe/SATA双协议移动硬盘盒 USB-C转HDMI转换器笔记本电脑HUB分线器拓展坞CM073【行情 报价 价格 评测】-京东) shopping site in China, where it’s still called a “docking station”, and it’s incredible that it can be used as a portable hard drive enclosure , this design is too intimate.
I heard about this brand for the first time, and I have never used it before. I was fascinated by the stability of fedora37 workstation running on a framework laptop, so I wanted to choose a docking station with excellent compatibility.
I would love to see about your experience using it in the ethernet part of linux (any distro), thank you, man.
Confirmed ethernet works out-of-the-box on Fedora 35 (linux 5.15.11-200.fc35) so presumably Fedora37 as well.
If you’d like to know more about this dock/hub I found out about it from this review … which conveniently also uses the Framework laptop!
There is not much difference between f35 and f37. This evaluation video is very good, and it can solve the problem of not being able to obtain Ethernet card expansion in the short term. Thank you everyone.
Hi, I’ve purchased this hub:
Anker USB C Hub, 555 USB-C Hub (8-in-1), with 85W Power Delivery, 4K 60Hz HDMI Port, 10Gbps USB C and 2 USB A Data Ports, gigabit Ethernet Port, microSD.
I did not test 4K resolution, but it works fine with manjaro linux (Kernel 6.1.12) and gigabit ethernet.
Fantastic, appreciate the share and especially the tested kernel.