this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2023
1365 points (94.1% liked)
linuxmemes
21607 readers
937 users here now
Hint: :q!
Sister communities:
Community rules (click to expand)
1. Follow the site-wide rules
- Instance-wide TOS: https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
- Lemmy code of conduct: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/code_of_conduct.html
2. Be civil
- Understand the difference between a joke and an insult.
- Do not harrass or attack members of the community for any reason.
- Leave remarks of "peasantry" to the PCMR community. If you dislike an OS/service/application, attack the thing you dislike, not the individuals who use it. Some people may not have a choice.
- Bigotry will not be tolerated.
- These rules are somewhat loosened when the subject is a public figure. Still, do not attack their person or incite harrassment.
3. Post Linux-related content
- Including Unix and BSD.
- Non-Linux content is acceptable as long as it makes a reference to Linux. For example, the poorly made mockery of
sudo
in Windows. - No porn. Even if you watch it on a Linux machine.
4. No recent reposts
- Everybody uses Arch btw, can't quit Vim, and wants to interject for a moment. You can stop now.
Please report posts and comments that break these rules!
Important: never execute code or follow advice that you don't understand or can't verify, especially here. The word of the day is credibility. This is a meme community -- even the most helpful comments might just be shitposts that can damage your system. Be aware, be smart, don't fork-bomb your computer.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Outdated for ~~Linux~~ Intel, still valid for Broadcom, probably not so bad for somewhat recent Realtek and AMD/Mediatek (last I've read is that Mediatek WiFi hardware sucks in general and disconnects happen on Windows, so the same happening on Linux would be the fault of the Linux driver).
EDIT: Accidentally wrote Linux instead of Intel.
I can absolutely confirm it's still valid for Realtek. I had one using the RTL8812AU chipset that basically no kernel version nor distro provided out of the box, so I constantly had to download a third-party driver from Github and manually patch it via dkms, or use a third-party repository containing the driver package... and then the driver broke so badly that it wouldn't let me update at all unless I uninstalled it, which left me without the internet I needed to actually update, effectively leaving me unable to update until I could buy another one from Mediatek that's compatible.
And said Mediatek wifi is really slow, so I just went from the frying pan into the fire...
Yeah, and I was explicitly writing about recent chips. RTL8812AU isn't recent. The very latest Windows driver is from 2018, so the chip itself was released a good while before that.
I know exactly what you had to go through because I had to do the same with mine a couple of years ago but since then for newer chips Realtek started contributing to Linux itself:
USB tethering your WiFi-connected phone would have worked as stop gap just as well. I had to do that a lot.
Ahh I see, thanks for clarifying. It seems that where I live mostly only has the older Realtek chips for sale, so I likely mostly had bad luck.
I tried USB tethering, but it wouldn't work for some reason... I don't remember exactly what happened, but I think either the phone or my computer couldn't detect each other.
USB tethering should look on the PC just like plugging an Ethernet cable.
I installed linux on a new pc 2 days ago, had no problem with the wifi drivers. I don't know if it's the fact that the wifi is integrated on the motherboard, but it was up and running without any tweeking from me (unlike windows)
In my cause it was actually a newer type of Realtek chip. 😞
But was the cause the Linux driver or the hardware? If the fault is the hardware and the experience on Linux is the same as on Windows, it's feature parity.
If in doubt, get an Intel WiFi card. Even in otherwise not upgradeable notebooks those are usually not soldered on. Also whatever is in a Steam Deck OLED looks like a good pick.
Does Intel sell wifi cards that use USB rather than PCI slots? My motherboard doesn't have the slot for a wifi PCIe card, and I've only seen Intel sell those :/
AFAIK the problem is that the chip itself was only developed with the PCI protocol in mind.
I see, that is a shame...
It was the driver, now that support is provided by the kernel it is rock-solid.
Realtek upstreamed their drivers in 2020 or 2021. I got rid of my last notebook with Realtek hardware for unrelated reasons.