The weird thing is that it seems to be working? Either I misdiagnosed the problem, or maybe my old one was just broken.

  • stoly@lemmy.world
    43·
    13 days ago

    You will learn SO MUCH about computers by just trying to make your wifi or some other thing work. And then you will never have trouble with that thing again. I remember having to do wrapping of drivers, but I don’t know if that is still a thing.

        • Natanael@infosec.pub
          10·
          13 days ago

          Like that time I got a random no-name action cam’s webcam mode to work on Linux by manually mounting it within seconds of connecting it

          • ☂️-@lemmy.ml
            2·
            12 days ago

            write us the driver to mount it within seconds of connecting it automatically.

      • stoly@lemmy.world
        6·
        13 days ago

        There’s something special about WiFi, but it is better than it used to be. I think it depends on your hardware more than anything. Any chance you can connect up to Ethernet in the meantime? You may be able to plug directly into a switch/router.

        • The Picard Maneuver@piefed.worldOPEnglish
          5·
          13 days ago

          It’s too far from the router right now, but I have some options.

          I needed to have the new adapter plugged in to use a tool from the manufacturer that is supposed to detect your adapter and install the most up to date driver for you, but of course you have to be online, so I was using the old semi-broken adapter and had both plugged in and connected to my router at the same time.

          It seems jank, but it made me wonder what would happen if I just left both connected forever. Would it stay seamlessly connected as long as they both don’t drop at the same time? Lol

          • stoly@lemmy.world
            7·
            13 days ago

            You remind me of when I moved to Argentina. I had a laptop whose fan suddenly froze but I was too broke to get a computer so I figured out that if I put it in JUST THE RIGHT spot next to a fan, it would get enough passive cooling to work. Then I did the silly and decided to upgrade, which made me have to plug in Ethernet. It took me ages to get the computer back in the right spot so that it wouldn’t power off due to overheating. All for WiFi…

          • Natanael@infosec.pub
            4·
            13 days ago

            You can make Linux load balance over two network connectors, but usually it prioritizes one network adapter for all traffic based on a scoring algorithms (wired and high bandwidth gets most points).

            You can manually set a priority too, or route specific traffic (based either on destination, protocol, or source program, etc) to a specific adapter. Some programs (like KTorrent) are capable of using multiple adapters without any specific config (which is why I was able to run torrents one time while literally nothing else worked with an old 3G internet dongle) .

  • grue@lemmy.world
    281·
    13 days ago

    As far as first problems with Linux go, that one’s a classic! Congrats, LOL

  • moonburster@lemmy.world
    24·
    13 days ago

    Be me and get a cheap MacBook Pro 2015 to run Linux Has Broadcom adapter Apparently the worst one 43602 chip Proceeds to install arch anyway Tries 3 drivers, no luck Tries many workarounds, no luck Cries to sleep Runs internet recovery to install macOS, fails

    Guys, listen to the wiki and techstack sites. Don’t get broadcom

  • taiyang@lemmy.world
    21·
    13 days ago

    This was also my first issue in Linux but it turned out my duel boot was somehow screwing things up. Windows broke WiFi for Linux, then when I booted into Windows it was broken there too. I blame Windows because it was right after a series of updates, but I have no idea why it’d impact other independent OS on other drives.

    Unfortunately I forgot the solution. It was probably since bios impacting thing, like how they often say to disable fast boot and junk.

    • bleistift2@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      19·
      13 days ago

      Devices are configurable via software. If windows managed to “flip a switch” on the WiFi chip, it would affect Linux as well if it didn’t reset it on boot.

      • palordrolap@fedia.io
        7·
        13 days ago

        This. Way back in the day, I had a sound card that would absolutely not work in one OS unless I’d already booted into a different one and “activated” it with the driver there.

        It might have been Win9x and WinNT, but it could just as easily have been Win9x and some early-ish version of RedHat.

        But anyway, it would not surprise me to learn that the same sort of thing still happens with some hardware.

      • taiyang@lemmy.world
        1·
        13 days ago

        Ahh, ok that makes sense. Reading other posts, pretty sure my wifi chip is the same as OP.

    • Magister@lemmy.world
      15·
      13 days ago

      Disable fast boot in your BIOS, else when you reboot, hardware is not re-initialized so if Windows loaded a custom firmware in the chip or set some stuff here and there, it may be incompatible with linux. If you dual boot, always disable FastBoot in the BIOS.

      • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        6·
        13 days ago

        and at this point it’s also worth noting that this is a setting in the UEFI setup, and this is different to the fast startup setting in windows that also needs to be turned off for other reasons.

    • feannag@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      8·
      13 days ago

      I had this issue and it was a fast boot issue. I’d shut down windows and boot Linux and WiFi wouldn’t work. A restart would fix it. With fast boot, windows doesn’t actually shut down, it’s more like a hibernate state. So the driver or whatever it’s called was being held by the widows partition and wouldn’t respond to another kernal.

      • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        3·
        13 days ago

        I think windows does shut down, but the hardware in your computer does not, and so when booting linux, the hardware does not start with a fresh slate. It’s not reinitialized, keeping configuration and possibly custom firmware from the other OS.
        interestingly, it also means malware could also escape a reboot this way… and for the network adapter, maybe it doesn’t even need to be co.patible with linux to work.

        what you mean though is the fast startup setting of windows. that does hibernate the computer as you say, after it logs out the user.

        • feannag@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          2·
          13 days ago

          You are correct. Fast startup used to be called fast boot, hence my confusion. And it looks like the current state of windows is saved in nonvolatile for fast startup, which I would consider not being fully shutdown, but that’s probably semantics at that point.

  • Monument@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    20·
    13 days ago

    My first Linux issue was that it didn’t support the USB hub I had at the time that was just always plugged into the windows machine I was installing Linux onto. So in 2003, I took my bulky tower to a friends house and it booted on the first try after weeks of failures trying on my own at home.
    I was both relieved, and incredibly annoyed.

  • kopasz7@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    18·
    12 days ago

    After both the 4G modem and the wifi dongles didn’t work I decided to flash an old TP-link router with OpenWRT (or was it DDWRT?) and using that in a bridge mode connected wifi and via ethernet to the PC. So yeah, then I got an Intel wifi 6 NIC and gave the router away.

    • BoxOfFeet@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      12 days ago

      Hah, I’ve totally done that. I’m thinking about doing it again, because it worked way better than my desktops built-in wifi adapter that has no external antenna.

  • WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world
    17·
    13 days ago

    In a pinch you can tether your phone through USB and use its Wi-Fi.

    If you have an old router lying around, you might be able to set it up as a repeater and then plug into it with Ethernet. That’s what I did for a while when my computer’s Wi-Fi was unreliable.

  • Eeyore_Syndrome@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    10·
    13 days ago

    Some distros have crusty old kernels/firmware and thus lack optimal support to boot lol.

    Anyway even with Qualcomm Wi-Fi 7, it was not great even a month back. 🙄

    I had to rebase to Bazzite-Testing and back to Bazzite-Stable a few times… Ended up pinning an older testing image for a while to keep working wifi while Fedora upstream fixed their crap.

    The joy of Atmoic made that super simple and painless I’ll say.

    Rolling back updates on tradish distros can be painful to the point of reinstall sometimes lol.

    • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
      2·
      13 days ago

      yup, same problems with v4l and a kernel incongruency. NixOS to the rescue. Add a line to pin the kernel and everything keeps working like nothing ever happened.

  • ThunderLegend@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    8·
    13 days ago

    Man that reminds me that I bought a Chinese motherboard to build my homelab and installed Debian. Great! One kernel upgrade later and my network card stopped working. Tried a lot of things but to preserve my mental health and to enjoy my jellyfin again, I just returned to the older kernel and voilá, everything worked again…so no updates for now …or ever

    • mlg@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      12 days ago

      Sounds like a rockchip board like orangepi haha. It’s funny because they actually have some killer hardware, but documentation on kernel drivers and DTB boot chain is sketchy at best.

    • baltakatei@sopuli.xyz
      2·
      13 days ago

      Same happened with me and a USB video capture card I bought specifically for Debian Linux compatibility. One kernel upgrade later… doesn’t work. Try again on old kernel? Works. I’ll probably try in a few months, but I can’t be bothered now.

  • reddit_sux@lemmy.world
    8·
    13 days ago

    The modem chipset everywhere are a CPU in its own and a black box at that.

    In your case it might go to sleep occasionally.

      • rezad@lemmy.world
        2·
        13 days ago

        if you use windows too, I remember from way back that windows made my network card to go to sleep(or some powersave move) at the windows shutdown, that make linux have issue with it.

        I don’t remember what the exact issue was but I remember it was windows doing it at its shutdown to save power, because pcie network card can stay awake even with pc off so that computer can be woke up via network (‘Shutdown Wake-On-Lan’ or a ‘Wake on Magic Packet’) windows made the card go to sleep and linux didn’t wake it up.

      • reddit_sux@lemmy.world
        2·
        12 days ago

        Had the same problem while dual booting. Was a realtek chipset. Had a script to wake it up on booting or on disconnect. A hack I cobbled from internet lost to multiple hardware changes and multiple accidental wiping the whole computer.

    • The Picard Maneuver@piefed.worldOPEnglish
      18·
      13 days ago

      Realtek. I was reading that many Realtek chipsets cause intermittent wifi drops, and that since they’re pretty inexpensive, it’s simpler to just get one that works. So, I went with another company that advertises as Linux compatible out of the box, plugged it in, checked it with ‘lsusb’, and saw the exact same Realtek chipset that my old one has.

      • SavvyBeardedFish@reddthat.com
        5·
        13 days ago

        Not sure if you have the same problem or not, but I had intermittent jitter spikes (and/or complete package drops) every 60 seconds on my Realtek chipset, ran:

        sudo iw dev wlan0 set power_save off

        And it’s been stable since (just had to make a udev rule to make it persistent across boot)

          • woelkchen@lemmy.world
            2·
            12 days ago

            Realtek only started to develop drivers in the upstream Linux kernel relatively recently, 5 years or so, and only for what was then the newest chipset. Something 88 and two letters but not 88 and other letters (I think CE).

            Does Intel WIFI still exist? If so, that is what is probably the best supported chipset.

    • Magister@lemmy.world
      3·
      13 days ago

      I have a Mediatek MT7921K, it’s using the mt7921e driver, 3 years ago the chip was new I think and not well supported in linux (problem with init/sleep/resume) but a lot of people fixed it, and mediatek released new firmware, and the driver is rock solid for about 3 years now, I’m using it on my daily driver working PC 8h/day, 0 problem, and use a BLE keyboard and trackball too.

      • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
        1·
        13 days ago

        Yeah that’s why I was wondering if their machine was fairly new. I’ve found consistently better driver support with time. I’m genuinely surprised that its an older machine and having these issue.

    • Decq@lemmy.world
      2·
      13 days ago

      Are all mediatek’s horrible? I’ve got one in my desktop but it’s just terrible. Randomly crashes my whole pc after a while. And the only way to fix it is to cmos reset the motherboard. It’s forever disabled in the bios now, which also means no Bluetooth sadly. Just wondering if I had bad luck or to always avoid them.

      • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
        1·
        13 days ago

        Basically yes.

        But thankfully they are equal-opportunity ass and suck on all platforms, not just Linux. I’m on bazzite rn because I couldnt get the bluetooth on either fedora OR ubuntu to work at full speed. Granted, my machine is very new, but like. I’m still getting that occasional issue where a bt device connects and the whole system lags.

    • Custard@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      13 days ago

      I gave up on the built-in mediatek wifi chip in my motherboard and just pulled the dedicated wifi card from my old pc. I’m on ethernet now, but man troubleshooting that was not fun.

      I even ordered a new chip, which, of course, never showed up.