Upgrading my laptop's wifi adapter

[NMZ]

Dear Mint users,

I have a question which seems trivial, but unfortunately I haven't been able to find an exact answer. I am new to Linux Mint (I was more like a Ubuntu-user usually), and I have installed Linux Mint 18.3 Cinnamon on a x250 Thinkpad. Curretly, I am not really satisfied with the behaviour of its wifi adapter (Realtek), and I am planning to replace it with an Intel 8260NGW. Here are my interrogations :
- Are the 8260NGW drivers included in Mint, since its a pretty common card ? (I have enabled the thrid-party packages during installation)
- If unsure, how/where to check it ?
- When I will have switched the cards, do I need to do a specific command to enable the appropriate drivers ?

Thank you in advance.

[JeremyB]

The drivers are normally part of the kernel for Intel devices and no real way to check with Intel unless you know the product and vendor ID's, main and subsystem as Intel has many different versions of some chipsets. If the driver is correct for the device, wifi will work after boot with the new wifi card

[catweazel]

- Are the 8260NGW drivers included in Mint, since its a pretty common card ? (I have enabled the thrid-party packages during installation)
- If unsure, how/where to check it ?
- When I will have switched the cards, do I need to do a specific command to enable the appropriate drivers ?

You really can't go wrong with Intel, unless you buy absolute bleeding edge gear.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en ... rking.html

According to that page, the Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 8260 has been supported since kernel 4.1. Also, it has a download link so if necessary the driver can be installed manually.

Also see: viewtopic.php?t=209496, but note the date.

[NMZ]

Thank you for your answers.

I don't really what "main and subsystem" refers to, but I have the product page at hand (https://www.amazon.fr/Wireless-AC-8260N ... dpSrc=srch). I suppose I should be able to tell from the pictures ?

I'll try it then (when I receive it), and I will keep the topic updated. Thank you.

[catweazel]

Thank you for your answers.

I don't really what "main and subsystem" refers to, but I have the product page at hand (https://www.amazon.fr/Wireless-AC-8260N ... dpSrc=srch). I suppose I should be able to tell from the pictures ?

I'll try it then (when I receive it), and I will keep the topic updated. Thank you.

By the way, my card is the 7260 and it worked out of the box.

[JeremyB]

You can't tell from pictures but the info is shown in results for

Code: Select all

lspci -nnk | grep -iA3 net

It usually looks similar to

Code: Select all

02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation Wireless 8260 [8086:24f3] (rev 3a)
	Subsystem: Intel Corporation Device [8086:1010]

The kernel source code has the following for the example device

Code: Select all

	{IWL_PCI_DEVICE(0x24F3, 0x1010, iwl8260_2ac_cfg)},

[NMZ]

Thank both of you for your precisions.
As soon as I receive it, I will do a feedback to list what worked out of the box and what didn't.

[NMZ]

Dear all,
Sorry for the prolonged delay of my answer, unfortunately a bad timing in the delivery of my new wifi adapter prevented me from installing it quickly.

I installed the 8260 intel card, and everything worked immediately. Moreover, the "laziness" of the reconnection to wifi after sleep was gone. It appears that the realtek card might be guilty for my issues, for unknown reasons.