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Solution to my Thinkpad E16 Wi-Fi Woes (bugs.launchpad.net)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Continued From: https://startrek.website/post/13283869 https://startrek.website/post/14075369

I managed to fix the one biggest gripe about my Thinkpad E16: the RTL8852BE Wi-Fi controller randomly dropping out. I actually found this a few days ago, but I had forgotten where I put the file I had edited. You put a file in modprobe.d called 70-rtw89.conf. Both /etc/modprobe.d/ and /usr/lib/modprobe.d work - I used the latter, but for the sake of conventions, you should probably use the former.

You then put in these options for the rtw89 module: options rtw89_pci disable_clkreq=y disable_aspm_l1=y disable_aspm_l1ss=y

Now, my Thinkpad is a fully functional Linux laptop. I will be docking it to an 8 from my initial score of 8.5, but I'm back to liking it for now. If you apply the fix, be sure to update the firmware as well - some older distros have an old version that works but returns a lot of journalctl error on this card.

Update: What do you know! The updated firmware-realtek just went into backports!

Thanks, https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-oem-6.1/+bug/2017277

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Realtek wifi is the bane of open source driver

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

As I have learned the hard way, it truly is.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I have 8723be, not only it randomly disconnects but also it sometimes drops to 30 KB/s requiring a reconnect and has bad signal reception even on Windows. Ethernet 4 life.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

That first part sounds like software/firmware stuff like mine, but the second part almost sounds like an antenna design issue.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Wait till you see a Mediatek

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I have P14s. I simply replaced the wifi card with an Intel AX200. Problem solved!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

A lot of the modern thinkpads have the wifi module soldered to the motherboard nowadays unfortunately. Sad that they would use these crappy realtek cards in the first place as well.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

According to the repair manual, my Wi-Fi card is actually replaceable, at least physically. I don’t know if Lenovo still does BIOS whitelists of cards like they used to (I think they did remove it a few years back.), but their OEM parts website has a diverse selection if this fix were ever to break.

I’d say other than the bottom being a bother to remove (and the keyboard not being designed to be replaced, though after some research, it seems possible), this is a surprisingly repairable laptop for how recent it it. It has dual SSD bays and a DIMM slot.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Oh that's good then. I think they stopped using whitelists a while ago, so if it is slotted you can probably replace it with anything. Maybe they reversed course on soldered modules then, or perhaps it only applied to some models. I looked into specs of the T16 at some point, and that one had soldered wifi module.