Have you used it without the dock? Because my experience with daily driving Linux at work for 10+ years with Thinkpads has been the complete opposite, with the exception of NVidia's driver garbage (which is just a problem with NVidia generally).

My current work system is a P53 that has an Nvidia GPU though and it's been working very very well for me through updates and the like via dkms.

The only other problem on that list I've encountered was within the first month or so after buying my T14s suspend support was a problem.

A bad dock can introduce a lot of problems.