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Re: Thunderbolt support under Linux for external displays

Jun 23, 2026 11:35:06 Jean-Francois Messier via linux <linux [ at ] linux-ottawa [ dot ] org>:

About TBT4 : With the comments, I now feel confident I could go ahead
and get such hardware to support my now-internal SSD storage.

About the firmware : Yes, I have this Lunar Lake system. You're right. I
will see about disabling this PCI setting within the MSI settings.

Thanks :-)

JFM

On 2026-06-23 11:24, Mark Pearson via linux wrote:
Hi,

A caveat that my answers inline may be a bit biased as I work on the Lenovo Linux enablement program for PCs.

On Tue, Jun 23, 2026, at 8:23 AM, Jean-Francois Messier via linux wrote:
I recently got myself an MSI Cubi B206 mini computer after looking at
major specs.

Question 1:

I overlooked the number of HDMI ports on the back. I have two monitors and I only got one port on the model I chose. I was thinking about using one of those cheap HDMI adapters that connect to USB 3 ports. I got one
that was working fine, but is now unused.

Talking with other geeks, I also thought I could use one of two
Thunderbolt ports I have on the back. I also understand there are cables that will go directly from the Thunderbolt USB-C connector to the HDMI
connector.

Looking at the PDF doc of my specific model, I see that I have two ports that "Support up to 8K display." Those are identified as "Thunderbolt 4
Port (USB Type-C)"

Before spending more money on this, I was looking to see how good is the
support of Thunderbolt for external displays under Linux. I use Linux
Mint 22.3 right now.

I don't know your HW but that generation of CPU supports TBT4 well.

The only caveat is that systems do have TBT and retimer FW and whilst issues there are relatively rare they do happen, and I don't know if the vendor does any support for Linux here. Usually nothing special is needed, but PCIe/TBT power management can get interesting.

Stuff like this is a great reason for buying a system from a vendor that supports Linux ;)

I've used my TBT display with a bunch of different systems (mostly running Fedora or Ubuntu), I also have TBT4 and TBT5 docks that I use quite happily. Linux support here should be good as long as the FW is sane.

Question 2:

After some challenges in getting Linux Mint installed, mainly caused by the setup for the start on USB port, I got Mint 22.3 installed. However, when shutting it down, be it form the menu or the command line, reboot
or shutdown, I get error message about PCI Bus error ("Recoverable")
scrolling forever, never turning the device actually off. I do not have the exact port numbers in note. When I turn it off by the power button
and restart it, everything is fine, but that's a bugger.

Any idea what setting I should change, either in the BIOS setup

Mint is not great on new HW and updates slowly. I believe you've got a Lunar Lake system, so it's last years CPU and should be fine by now, but without knowing kernel and linux-firmware levels it's hard to be sure. I'd recommend trying Fedora 44 live USB as that will be more up to date and help check if it's fixed upstream.

The PCIe recoverable errors are more likely due to your system FW. Try disabling PCI power management (pcie_aspm=off as a kernel boot arg) or yelling at the vendor (that's what my customers usually do...)

Mark

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