New Aspire E15 and Arris Surfboard router

The Surfboard router works great with my old Toshiba, but my new E15 has trouble with it.

I've been using USB sticks with MX linux, or Mint, or Ubuntu.

I've also "installed" 2 OSs that have the same problem.

I ran a "lspci" and found it is "Qualcom atheros" or similar. The googles says I need "firmware-atheros" which is already installed on all 3 OSs.

All 3 of above mentioned OSs can "see" the router and "reportedly" connect but nothing works, can't get to "google" or the weather site. Also "sudo apt update" is unable to update.

MX linux, however, is able to connect to the neighbors router and get to "google" and to the weather site. So my wifi card works. The neighbor uses a "linksys" router.

So what are my options here? Wild guesses include:

1) Daisy chain a linksys router with the Surfboard?
2) Use a linksys "range extender"?
3) Use some sort of "wireless dongle"? Or "wireless antenna"?

I haven't tried anything yet but would like to know what direction to go. Thanks in advance.

Edit: Another question, does a wireless dongle take your wifi card out of the game? Does it "replace" your wifi card?

All 3 of above mentioned OSs can "see" the router and "reportedly" connect but nothing works, can't get to "google" or the weather site. Also "sudo apt update" is unable to update.

As you've mentioned that you can connect, but can't browse this may just be a DNS issue. When connected, try pinging a well-known internet IP address eg Google DNS server

ping 8.8.8.8

Is that successful?

If pinging by hostname is not working eg

ping google.com

then it is likely that a valid nameserver is missing. (You may need to configure one manually.)

What is returned by the following?

grep name /etc/resolv.conf

To share any output with us, copy/paste to a text file and transfer to an internet-connected machine with a memory stick.