[arcfour]

Oh god, I had a Mac for work recently and had to spend 3 weeks becoming an expert in Mac External Displays And Thunderbolt just to get my HP Thunderbolt 4 dock (officially compatible with Macs!) to use a dual monitor setup with it. Finally I got it working, but every configuration I tried Just Worked(tm) on Linux. Jeez...

[malshe]

This sounds more like problem of HP’s dock than a Mac. Just because they said it is officially compatible with Mac doesn’t mean it is. Also, compatible with which Mac- Intel or M series? I use three different docks on two Mac Mini (M4 Pro) and they all worked out of the box. I did my research before buying them by watching YouTube reviews.

[arcfour]

So Mac doesn't support DisplayPort MST like everyone else does (Windows and Linux have supported this STANDARD for years), because they are assholes and don't care about their users, and the fact that multi monitor support is different between Intel Macs, certain M1s (cannot use more than one external monitor at all!), and the rest of the Apple Silicon lineup (other M1s, M2+) is insane.

I eventually got it working on this Intel Mac by using one HDMI and one specific DisplayPort output on the dock so it wouldn't try to multistream it internally in the dock or whatever (can't remember what exactly it was doing). It might have involved an HDMI to DP converter. I honestly tried to purge my memory of it once I got it working.

Note that all setups worked fine with Linux without modifications. Would have likely worked fine on Windows, too, since it supports MST. Only one specific setup worked with Mac.

So no, it's not a problem of the dock, it's a problem with Apple refusing to support a standard so they can make people buy the expensive $400 docks they hawk in Apple stores. Or because they are lazy and think because they don't care, their users shouldn't either.

You will find many people complaining about Mac's multi monitor support (or lack thereof) online. They are choosing to ignore user feedback.

[jijijijij]

This is exactly the double standard, or bias when talking operating systems.

When it's macOS/Windows, it's someone else's fault; when it's Linux, it's Linux fault.

When you have to tinker on macOS/Windows that's just what has to be done, no biggie; when you have to tinker on Linux, it's a burden nobody should be subjected to.

People are blind to the work they've grown accustomed to. There are many things that are much, much easier on Linux than macOS or Windows.

[freedomben]

Indeed, and especially the double standard regarding "oh but on Linux you have to carefully check if the hardware is supported by Linux" but when it's a Mac it will "just work." In GPs comment they have to do the same hardware compat research as a Linux user does, but that's never listed as a downside for Mac

[malshe]

This is a bizarre complaint. There are more Mac users than Linux users but still far fewer than Windows users. As such, there are so many examples of hardware and software that are incompatible with Mac. Our IT dude keeps telling me to switch to Windows because of better support from third party vendors.

My comment was specifically about the HP dock. I have nothing for or against Linux as I have never used it, don't know anybody who uses it, and I have no plans to use it. I am simply not qualified to comment on Linux.

[jijijijij]

Don't take it personal. This wasn't about you specifically, but the sentiment frequently observed. No one would have been blaming HP when we were talking Linux. The need for tinkering, or hardware considerations is frequently brought up against Linux; it's never brought up for macOS, on the contrary, on macOS everything "just works" - even when it doesn't. On Windows, for years, you had/have to search the web for obscure software and drivers, then download them from shady third-party websites, repeating the process for updates; on Linux you always were able to install and update almost everything signed and shipped from trusted sources through the package manager, long before app stores, but apparently adding a line to some config file is unbearable inconvenience. Somehow people are very ignorant about the limitations (sometimes unfixable) and troubleshooting in Windows and macOS, but hyper vigilant when it comes to Linux.

I am running this Fedora installation for a few years, now. No clean install in-between, just super stable and pleasant upgrades. Everything just works for me. Zero tinkering. If there is a bug, it's usually tracked and gone in a few weeks, at most the next release 6 months off. If a HP dock doesn't work, it's HP's fault for not using open standards, certainly not a problem of Linux.