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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
mediatek?
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.
Realtek is just ass in general. I avoid them like the plague.
They’re OK in windows, but I have never had a good experience with them on Linux.
It sounds like you’re not alone, and it’s what I was trying to do too! I just didn’t pay close enough attention to the specs on my new adapter, lol
Lesson learned.
Did the new adapter have the same problems? I know you said it read as the same.
So far… nope. I need to test it some more, but I’m just waiting for it to start happening again.
Is it a pretty new machine?
No, very old. A lot of the hardware is from 2013.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.