Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind. HP gave me a number to call on Monday to see which cards they officially support.
You could test it today by swapping your old one over to see if it works. Assuming its the same form factor of course. It either will or wont work and if it doesnt then the list of supported wifi chipsets is probably 1 or 2 cards.
Thanks. I’m at work now. So I will try that when I get home to my tools. This is what I have in the old currently working laptop: Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6205.
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Have you set the OS in the BIOS to Linux or non-Windows?
yeah, thats not gonna fit so hold off I guess
I didn’t see an option for non-windows/Linux in BIOS. I did disable secure boot.
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OK. I’ll call HP on Monday and check on the one you suggested. I’ll post if it works. If not I’ll just get a USB wifi. I don’t need a lot of IO for this laptop.
They probably wont tell you the one I suggested will or will not work directly but if you can find out if there is a hardware whitelist for wifi cards then you’ll know for sure if it does. You can pick up an Intel 3168NGW for less than 10 bucks usually and linux works with it out of the box with dual band + AC and bluetooth. They’re really common adapters.
Alternatively you can get the Intel AX200NGW which also has full linux support but not until kernel 5.1. This would give you 802.11AX support and bluetooth 5.0 if you care about those features. They’re also pretty cheap, usually under 25.
The whitelist is what I’m hoping to get on Monday. I tried support, but apparently they want you to talk to “Part Picking” instead of support for that.
Odds are pretty good that if there is a whitelist then it will contain cards that will give you similar problems because they will be very similar chipsets. The problem you’re having is down to firmware. The card has to have a firmware blob loaded onto it to work every time its powered up and I believe this is where your issue lies. The intel cards have the same blob but intel is pretty good about getting its drivers and firmware baked into the linux kernel which is why they work well.
If thats the case then some low profile USB adapter would be the next best route for support IMO.
Alternatively we could try to dig deeper into whats giving you headaches with your current one but this route means that you’ll have to apply fixes to any distro you use, which is why I suggested replacing it for one with much better support instead.
I appreciate all your help. I’m going to follow the path you laid out and I report back once I figured it out.
The new wifi card you suggested arrived today. Installed it and worked right away. Thanks for your help.
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sweet