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Those have gotten a lot better in recent years. Last time I had an issue with WiFi drivers was in 2016.

Graphics drivers, on the other hand, especially Optimus...

All my Wi-Fi just works on any machine I have Linux on. But yeah years ago this was not the case.

Am I supposed to have Wifi driver issues? My laptop's one always worked flawlessly without me having to even look at it

ndiswrapper flashbacks o_o

Lemmy needs polls. The last time I had problems with WIFI drivers was... 15 years ago? On a laptop bought in a supermarket that originally came with Windows Vista. Oh, and the raspberry pi - fuck raspberry pis. They can't pick wifi module worth shit.

Tell me you haven't used Linux in the past ~20 years without telling me you haven't used Linux in the past ~20 years

To be fair most wifi device manufacturers are bastards and don't publicise manuals.

Jesus Christ OP use trigger warnings

This was true maybe 10 years ago, nowadays Linux has better driver support than Windows. Printers, networking, input devices, everything I've tried is plug n play with Linux, Windows you gotta driver hunt.

Extremely outdated, but would still work with fingerprint sensors or NFC readers

from when this shit comes from, 2000?

Phew. For a second there I thought the book would be about Bluetooth in Linux.

15 years ago this was an issue on my laptop.

The last time I had an issue with Linux drivers was in 2002, trying to set up a pppoe connection. I had no smartphone and there were no YouTube, Reddit, wikis, forums etc.

Back in 2016 I helped install some wifi drivers on a friend's laptop in Ubuntu 16.04, which was not really a big deal.

I feel like these memes are made by Windows users :)

I have a few wifi adapters from china who only work properly under Linux lmfao

Did Microsoft actually infiltrate Lemmy or something? I'm hearing of issues about Linux that haven't existed since the very first days of desktop Linux

If you think that's bad, try wifi on FreeBSD

Hey, as long as I ignore the thousand of entries in the error log I get every day from the iwlwifi kernel module crashing and restarting every 10 minutes its fine.

What killed my interest in Linux in highschool. Kept trying to get Ubuntu working but couldn't get the internet to work for anything. Given that every help guide boiled down to "Go to this website and download x" and I didn't have internet because... no wifi, I ended up getting frustrated enough to quit the whole thing. Maybe someday.

I've never had an issue with any drivers on Linux, everything I use just works. Even some old obscure drawing tablet from 2005 that said it required you to install its driver worked instantly.

Me struggling with Realtek on Linux 🤝 One of my partners struggling with Nvidia on Linux

At least I managed to get a Linux-compatbile wifi USB later on, but it was pricey to import it and it's still quite slow :/

There are whole-ass companies selling laptops with Linux preinstalled now. They work. Even with Bluetooth.

You can buy a external AR9271 WiFi adapter for $20 thats fully free software/free firmware.

This vibes with me, but fifteen years ago me.

Installed Ubuntu on my first netbook and had to sit in the stairs to the second floor jacked into the single Ethernet cable we had for a few hours to troubleshoot it.

I haven't used every distro, but it seems like most of them are plug and play these days.

Never had problems with WI-Fi, but Nvidia Optimus

Funny that my brand new laptop just arrived today and its own wifi card wasn't recognized in Windows, so I had to use my phone via usb-tethering. It's a Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 (14APU8) by the way, Ryzen 7th gen, full AMD, OLED etc. It came without any OS (no way I'm paying for Windows lol) and my first Win11 experience on this laptop was "please choose a network to continue" and no networks were displayed at all, because wifi card had no drivers (Realtek btw). Windows setup wouldn't let me continue without a network, but there was no way to have a network. Funny Win11 moment right there. After some hours configuring everything I then installed my usual dual-boot Fedora and everything worked even in the live-usb. This meme is not valid for Linux anymore. Windows however, now thats a meme.

Lots of people saying this is an old problem , but I have a new IdeaPad I bought a few months ago and any non-rolling release distro I find, the wifi hardware isn't detected.

Until just a few weeks ago I couldn't find any solution. Fortunately I finally found a way to build the drivers, but it still requires me to tether my phone to get internet long enough to download the source.

So the problem might be better but it's not the non-issue some people are pretending it is.

The good news: Broadcom got out of the labtop industry

Bad news: Broadcom is in the phone industry

Try Windows. It regularly breaks drivers (not only WiFi) on some hardware (mostly HP). I've never had issues with WiFi on Linux on HP, Dell, Microsoft Surface and even a Macbook.

This is definitely a meme for AntiqueMemesRoadshow lol

The thing is, there's "iwd" and "wpa_supplicant". You use either one or the other, but not both. Sources like the Gentoo handbook will tell you that but, not all Wiki's do as good a job of pointing that out <...looking directly at you Arch...>.

Strange. One of them main reasons I wiped my Dell XPS OEM Windows and installed Linux was for -better- WiFi behaviour.