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Wrong and terrible timing. There's a hell of a lot more to "Linux WiFi" than just the driver code that Larry maintained. I definitely wouldn't rule out hardwa
by freedomben 2y ago
Wrong and terrible timing. There's a hell of a lot more to "Linux WiFi" than just the driver code that Larry maintained. I definitely wouldn't rule out hardware issues. I've seen race conditions in driver code before, but it's quite rare and Larry was really good at identifying and elimianting those. If your laptop is workable, pop the cover and make sure the wifi card connection is fully seated. Also check the dmesg logs early and often after boot and make note of anything related to wifi. Chances are good that if it's not a hardware issue, there's something in there to help point you in the right direction.
- dfox 2y agoProbably the most common reason for the integrated wifi card becoming “non-deterministically non-recognized” is that the OEM fucked up the rf-kill in that there are slight differences between what the EC firmware and ACPI expect and how the hardware is implemented (missing pull-ups, EMI induced into high-impedance logic trace somewhere…). Anecdotally, on any laptop that I have seen with these kinds of issues (basically every new Intel laptop I bought between 2017 and 2020, which includes lot of weird no-name tablet-in-laptop-formfactor crap, but also ThinkPad X270), it progresses such that the WLAN becomes unusable in Windows but you would hardly even notice in Linux, where it just works. [edit: obviously comparing Windows to Windows is nonsense, it works in _Linux_]