Wifi issues on Linux
 

This might be a bit hard to solve since I don't have linux installed on my system right now. I had tried it a few months back and removed it when I couldn't find any solutions.

Linux Distro - POPOS!
Device - HP pavillion e3022-TX

I have used Linux before on an older system(Mint). I decided to install it on this newer laptop and went with POPOS just to try something else. I had installed it in dual boot and ran into an issue where wifi just wouldn't work.

It would disconnect a lot and when it would work the speed would be abysmal. I compared it to windows on the same system and the difference was massive. Even loading basic websites took forever.

Ethernet was working fine.

I asked around on reddit and someone mentioned that my wifi card was basically not usable on linux. My laptop comes with a - Network controller: Intel Corporation Killer Wi-Fi 6 AX1650i 160MHz Wireless Network Adapter (201NGW) (rev 30).

I looked up solutions online and I couldn't find anything other than replacing my wifi card or getting a usb adapter. Currently going out to get my card replaced is not a good idea due to COVID and I don't know if I can replace my wifi card or if it is just soldered on(I am not good with hardware so I don't trust myself to open it up). My laptop comes with two USB slots and both are in use too so the second option isn't doable for me.

Is there any solution that doesn't involve those two options? If possible I would like to install Mint since I found it very user friendly.

I see this thread on Arch where they went through an enormous amount of trouble to get that chip working and were ultimately successful, but they knew a lot about loading new firmware and testing wi-fi that would be tricky for a newby. Basically, there are some bad combinations of firmware and driver versions, but if you find the right release, it works. I would try running the latest Mint. There's a live image on Sourceforge.

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=247705

Thanks for the response. Yeah I don't know how I would go about doing this. I guess I should load linux Mint in a Virtual Machine first(A VM should work the same as normal right?) instead of making a partition again.

Can you explain to me what you mean by changing firmware and driver versions? How would I go about it? I went through the thread you linked and I didn't understand what they did.

I should add, I am essentially a 'casual' user. I mostly use my laptop for college work or gaming. I don't have any knowledge on technical stuff.

And would these firmware and driver versions get updated later on and stop working again if I update Mint?

As of 17 July 2021
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us...-products.html

It could be a kernel issue since PopOS is running 5.8 and Mint 20 runs 5.4. I don't know what distribution runs 5.1 or 5.3 out of the box.

Unfortunately, wireless under linux is not always a "plug and play" thing and depends on many factors.

So from what I understand an older kernel version might work?

okay, so I installed virtualbox and ran the latest LinuxMint ISO through it and it worked perfectly fine. Internet speeds was just like on windows and stuff like youtube videos were loading just fine unlike before where it would take a long time and multiple disconnects.


However Mint itself is showing this as a wired connection even though I'm on wifi. What can that mean?

The VirtualBox network adapter is a wired virtual device regardless of the physical hardware.

The only way to actually access physical hardware from VB is to use a USB wireless adapter.

If I understand the article.

I made a bootable USB drive for mint and I ran that. Wifi was not usuable at all. connecting to wifi was not even an option anywhere. Ethernet still works.

Wifi adapter did not show up in driver manager but showed up in terminal

update - someone suggested that using a linux distro with a rolling release since that has a higher chance of working for newer wifi cards(they also suggested it could be due to rolling releases having a newer kernel version and showed a link stating that the wifi drivers were broken for 5.3 and 5.4) so I installed Fedora and it works!!

well partly or I'd just be closing this post lmao. My internet speed is roughly halved. It's still usable but not as good as it could be. My phone is showing a speed of 140Mbps while Fedora is showing 70Mbps.

How can I fix this speed disparity if I can and how do I check the Kernel version for Fedora. Is Fedora usable for a newbie like me who is used to Debian based systems with Cinnamon? Will installing Mint and updating the kernel to what Fedora uses make it work?

Fedora is very usable. The desktop is not identical but there is enough flexibility and different DE managers available to tailor it the way you like.

If you were to log on to the askfedora forum with your wifi issues it is quite likely they can assist in solving it. I cannot guarantee that until tried, but I believe the results will be worth the effort.

Weirdly my wifi issues disappeared the next day so I've installed Fedora on dual boot and I am not having any issues with it in wifi so far. So I think it's safe to assume that a newer Kernel version is what was needed. Currently Fedora uses 5.11.12 kernel so if anyone is having this same issue updating to that version could work.

Thanks for the help everyone

If you are on the 5.11.12 kernel with fedora you certainly are not up to date with the latest. 5.11.12 was replaced some time back. Fedora 33 was on 5.12.14 when I switched my desktop to fedora 34 a couple weeks ago, and fedora 34 is at present using 5.13.4. In fact I just updated my laptop (fedora 33) and it installed 5.13.4 today.

Checking the kernel version is as simple as "uname -a".

Updating the system is as simple as "sudo dnf upgrade" at the command line, or selecting the updates tab in the gnome software app gui.

after updating, it is on 5.13.4 but when I was only using it from USB it was on 5.11.12

Ahh...
I forgot which kernel fedora 34 began with, and you had not mentioned booting from the live usb previously so I did not connect that.