I got a new (used) laptop today and am having trouble the the wifi. It works when I first install Mint, but then wifi switches to “unavailable” when I reboot. I though I solved the problem, but switching to POP OS, but then POP stopped booting at all. I tried Manjaro, but that just black screened when I attempted to install it. I pressed ctrl, alt, F2 to try and go to tty mode for Nvidia drivers with Manjaro, but nothing happened. i did switch it to non-free drivers and tried again also without success.
I have no idea. I already bought the laptop and installed Linux instead of the Windows 10 it was shipped with, so returning it is not an option at this point. I mostly got it because the laptop I already had with a Intel i5-2520M and Radeon HD 6400M/7400M Series GPU wasn’t working well for games. The Radeon GPU was too old to support Vulkan.
Sorry, I misunderstood when I first read your reply. I thought you were suggesting another Intel branded computer. I just realized you meant a Intel USB wifi. That might wind up being the solution in the end.
this^
Not all hope is lost. if you can open up your laptop or look it up on the web, you can check if there is a wifi module. Heck some laptops have extra m.2 slots that you can use to hook up a intel wifi card.
An alternative solution would be to get a usb wifi dongle that works with linux. It is not as clean as a wifi chip in your laptop, but it allows you to still use your new laptop. Furthermore, you don’t need to buy a new laptop or check if your wifi card can be swapped out.
If you are getting a new laptop, make sure you check to see if the laptop has a intel wifi card option or a removable m.2 wifi slot.
Thanks for the reply. I found that one while googling for a solution. Unfortunately it did not work. It’s looking like replacing the wifi card is going to be the way to go. I’ll have to contact HP and see what cards are on their whitelist.
Yeah, I just watched a video on it. It turns out the instructions I saw earlier on Ifixit were for a different HP 15 laptop. It’s looking like I’m going to go that route.
While I have it open, the SSD in my older laptop is better than the one the new laptop came with, so I will probably change that out as well.
just if you putting a wifi card on as a substitute for m.2, make sure your wifi card can be powered off of the pci port. IIRC some pci wifi cards needed external power from the motherboard on laptops. On desktops, the pci card had power delivery integrated on the pci board
Thats the one I found too. Theres no extra ‘power wire’. The standard is the same as I’ve seen on every laptop I’ve had apart. You can use any NGFF E key wifi card so long as the bios allows it. My suggestion is the 3168 I recommended before but you could go with newer cards if you want more throughput.
. They have a nice new AX WiFi card too. It will require a newer kernel but that’s easy.