ThinkPad X200 UltraBase

Lenovo X200 UltraBase Here is some basic info about X200 UltraBase: portable dock for the X200-series ThinkPads (X200, X200s, X200 Tablet) providing extra ports (notably DisplayPort), Ultrabay Slim slot and an additional battery slot. Features Passthrough ports: Gigabit Ethernet (RJ45) VGA Microphone Headphone Additional ports: 4 USB ports (1 on right side, 3 on back) DisplayPort Battery slot Serial Ultrabay Slim Kensington security hole Pros & Cons Positives: ease up of portability of laptop, digital video output, option for optical drive, allows effective use of second battery Negatives: Reduces cooling capabilities (especially HDD) DisplayPort support in Linux Most Linux distributions still use 2.6.x version of Intel driver which does not have support for DisplayPort. This means that you will be able to use it only in low graphics mode with vesa driver. Support for DisplayPort is developed by Keith Packard in display-port branch and will be hopefully merged to master before 2.8 release. This freedesktop's bugzilla issue tracks this work. Keith is also working on improving the support on the kernel side in his private branch. According to this article it will be hopefully included in 2.6.31 release. Meanwhile several people reported to successfully build and use the driver from Keith's display-port branch. For Ubuntu Jaunty you can try this PPA.