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Linux Intel WiFi driver broken with 5&6GHz bands for longer than three years

bugzilla.kernel.org

81–90 of 148 posts

Re: Linux Intel WiFi driver broken with 5&6GHz bands for longer than three years

#81

Ironically, I run a machine with a Realtek Wifi 6 chip and it works great on Linux, despite everything I read online was that Realtek is to be avoided on Linux and Intel should be the go-to. In a similar fashion, I was also luckier with Nvidia proprietary drivers on Linux than with AMD open source drivers. Seems like HW on Linux really is a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get.

The problem with realtek chipsets is that many of them just have no in-kernel driver, so you have to use some questionably maintained out of tree driver from github or whatever. Soundslike you got one of the chipsets that has in-kernel support, so that is good.

No I don't think it's in kernel support, I think that Nobara linux has been patched to support it.

It's not a recommendation to go and buy a Realtek card, I was just sharing my anecdote.

Re: Linux Intel WiFi driver broken with 5&6GHz bands for longer than three years

#82

A friend of mine had intermitent WiFi issues for a long time. One WiFi they could just never even find, until we figured out the Intel WiFi driver for their WiFi-Chipset contained a bug causing 2ghz WiFis on channel 13 to not be visible. It is a tiring process to identify issues like this in drivers. Really sucks when manufacturers just do not test their software.

> WiFi-Chipset contained a bug causing 2ghz WiFis on channel 13 to not be visible.

Don't use non-standard channels. You're making it worse for everyone.

Re: Linux Intel WiFi driver broken with 5&6GHz bands for longer than three years

#83

Ironically, I run a machine with a Realtek Wifi 6 chip and it works great on Linux, despite everything I read online was that Realtek is to be avoided on Linux and Intel should be the go-to. In a similar fashion, I was also luckier with Nvidia proprietary drivers on Linux than with AMD open source drivers. Seems like HW on Linux really is a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get.

>works great on Linux

Now try `sudo iw dev wlan0 del` and the kernel will deadlock :)

Re: Linux Intel WiFi driver broken with 5&6GHz bands for longer than three years

#84
5 week old issue. Ed: oops, 3 year old!! (what year is it?) No useful updates.

Generally I think Intel is one of the best companies at open-source by far & it's a huge competitive advantage. But all companies of any notable size are companies of many smaller orgs... Still surprising, as Intel has excellent dedication to wifi & has great works like connman.

But also... competitive advantages only matter if anyone notices or cares. This issue is incredible egg-in-the-face to literally all of us. That everyone missed this is absurd!

Ed: now that I see the full year, pretty shameful seemingly nothing has been done in 3 years. Why?!? Ed ed: oh, only affects AP mode... OK now that's not good but way more reasonable scope!!

Re: Linux Intel WiFi driver broken with 5&6GHz bands for longer than three years

#85
post #76
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what if someone moves or simply uses hardware in a different region that's sold? What if the laws change? The correct 'work around' is to build a kernel with a DEFAULT regulatory domain, abstract from any vendor's specific implementation, allow that domain to be updated at runtime (particularly for mobile devices), and follow the laws there in. I also advocate (in this post) for wifi_regulations=BREAKTHELAWANDDIS…

Keep in mind that for stations only (e.g. mobile devices most of the time), the rules are relaxed: if the station sees an AP operating on some channel, it is allowed to assume that it can operate on that channel. And of course passively scanning a channel to check for the presence of an AP is not transmitting, so no regulatory problem there. But don't worry, for 6 GHz the FCC has come up with even more insane stuff:…

Why does the FCC even care so much? What nefarious things can the average consumer possibly do that a motivated attacker can't already do? A motivated attacker who wants to change all the street lights to green will have hardware that lets them do whatever they want. The other 99.999% of people will just use their system as configured by their software vendor, legally. Why do we need hardware failsafes? Why do we need certifiably absurd things happening at the driver level like AFC? It's not like this is a health and safety issue--these consumer devices shouldn't be capable of transmitting that much radiation regardless. So why does the FCC care so much? Is there a history of disaster related to consumer radios operating illegally that I'm unaware of?

Re: Linux Intel WiFi driver broken with 5&6GHz bands for longer than three years

#86
post #84

5 week old issue. Ed: oops, 3 year old!! (what year is it?) No useful updates. Generally I think Intel is one of the best companies at open-source by far & it's a huge competitive advantage. But all companies of any notable size are companies of many smaller orgs... Still surprising, as Intel has excellent dedication to wifi & has great works like connman. But also... competitive advantages only matter if anyone noti…

> 5 week old issue

The link I'm looking at says 2020-02-08.

Re: Linux Intel WiFi driver broken with 5&6GHz bands for longer than three years

#87

This is for 5ghz AP (access point) mode. As a station/client it works fine. A workaround here https://tildearrow.org/?p=post&month=7&year=2022&item=lar

This is utterly absurd for an AP. It effectively implements a very poor consensus algorithm by which the nearby APs coordinate to decide what country they’re in. Of course, in the absence of any of the APs having any authoritative idea, it won’t work very well.

Re: Linux Intel WiFi driver broken with 5&6GHz bands for longer than three years

#88
post #84

5 week old issue. Ed: oops, 3 year old!! (what year is it?) No useful updates. Generally I think Intel is one of the best companies at open-source by far & it's a huge competitive advantage. But all companies of any notable size are companies of many smaller orgs... Still surprising, as Intel has excellent dedication to wifi & has great works like connman. But also... competitive advantages only matter if anyone noti…

5 weeks? It's actually 3 years.

Re: Linux Intel WiFi driver broken with 5&6GHz bands for longer than three years

#89
Intel sometimes gets a lot of credit from desktop Linux users for having open-source drivers, but I don't get it. Their drivers are bad, at least when it comes to graphics and WiFi. Tearing problems, graphical artifacts, and connections dropping out have all been problems I've had with Intel as long as I can remember.

I haven't had a laptop that came with an Atheros chipset in a while, so I don't know if the buyout by Qualcomm has spoiled anything, but Atheros always had way better WiFi support on Linux than Intel did. And similarly, a recent AMD GPU with the community drivers in Mesa has given me way better stability than anything Intel has put out.

Open-source drivers are nice, but good open-source drivers are worth a lot more. Go for AMD or Atheros where you can.

(That said, I've had unproblematic experiences with a lot of other kinds of Intel hardware on Linux, like SSDs, wired NICs, NUCs, and even Thunderbolt. And for the most part, WiFi has been more or less good enough for me with Intel in the past few years that I haven't bothered to replace Intel WiFi cards when they've come included in my laptops.)

Re: Linux Intel WiFi driver broken with 5&6GHz bands for longer than three years

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you please give the dmesg and/or other relevant id for your Realtek device? I'm getting tired of these Intel ax2?0 issues. I'm not much of a Bluetooth user but does it also work well?

I'm currently logged into Windoze for some work but I can tell you the card is a Realtek RTL8852AE. I can pull up the dmesg info later tonight when I reboot into linux if you want. Bluetooth works fine on it on Linux as well between my phone and my Sony headphones. No complaints from me on Fedora/Opensuse. Out of curiosity, what issues are you having with the Intel AX chip? I also have it on my Lenovo Intel work mach…

Same RTL chip here, works absolutely fine without any issues.
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