most realtek/atheros chipsets will work out of the box (don’t quote me on it though) never had an issue with them.
Heres a good cheap one
I recently used it with the latest fedora installer. worked fine.
there’s an ac version that says supports linux. I’d double check the chipset compatibility though. it uses the RTL8814AU. I dont see why it wouldnt work as long as you have the latest kernel
Maybe swap the internal ones for more modern Intel ones? What model laptops?
I don’t mess with dongles too often but if you go check the compatibility of dongles with Kali you will have a hard time going wrong. The Alfa awus036ach comes to mind but it’s a bit bigger than most.
Looks like you might run into problems with the bios in those machines not working with other adapters but for the lenovo the intel 7260 would be a possible option.
As long as you go Intel, you’ll be fine. The drivers are built into the kernel, not modules, and certainly not reverse-engineered, so you’ll see solid performance and reliability.
Indeed, thats the one. It might not work though like I said, because of locks on what hardware in bios. In my anecdotal adventures, this isnt a huge problem.
Haven’t received my new Wifi card yet but it seems that there is a Wifi Whitelist… at least there was (hopefully)
I won’t know if the new card will work until I plug it in and try to boot. A portable usb Windows 10 install allowed me to install a custom BIOS (another new thing I learnt to do through all of this)