I’m getting poor connectivity and download speeds with my new XPS laptop (one bar of signal and max download of ~2mb/s). My 2012 Macbook Pro is getting much faster download speeds and full wifi signal. I recently had Elementary OS installed on on this computer before installing Manjaro (much better). It had the same issues but then I found a iwlwifi backport package in the app store and after installing it, I still had poor signal but much better download speed (5-7 mb/s). I believe the backport is needed because Elementary OS is running on Ubuntu 18.04 (kernel 5.0 I think). I’m not sure why that made my wifi so much faster though.
I can’t figure out what I need to do to improve my download speed. Is there some configuration issue here? It looks like Manjaro thinks I have a different card installed than I actually do.
For sure. But I’m wondering if it thinks it’s a difference Intel card than it really is. lspci says it’s a Intel Corporation Wireless-AC 9462/9560 which is a different card than the AX1650. So I’m thinking that perhaps if I can get iwlwifi to use the correct card, that could fix my problem.
FWIW, there was not a /etc/modprobe.d/iwlwifi.conf file originally. I created it to add these options. If there’s supposed to be more configuration info in that file, then I don’t have it.
Killer Networking has no direct support: Linux Support – support.killernetworking.com and they just use the chipset of Wireless-AC 9462/9560, modified the chipset and their driver for better performance. But linux just uses the original driver for the chipset.
Normally there is no file on Manjaro or Arch. Ubuntu and Ubuntu based Distros like Elementary OS have some extra rules to make it work or maybe it is because of the kernel. iwlwifi is a unified driver for all intel cards and is baked into kernel. A kernel switch could maybe solve it.
@mike.lloyd03
You should use an LTS Kernel like 5.4 or the next stable one: 5.10.
As you can see: https://www.kernel.org/ 5.9 is already marked as EOL (end of life).
Not really… the LTS versions will get bugfixes and security updates back ported, but no new features. Most new feature are nice to have, but make no real difference.
But if you use a brand new system, you will have to use a newer kernel, because new device drivers etc… will get added there.
However it depends on your system. If the LTS Version works, i would not change it. Only if you really need a feature on a newer kernel.
I just wanted to follow up on this. I ended up returning my XPS and got a Dell Precision with an Intel AX201 card in it. When I got the computer, I just moved the hard drive over from the old computer and booted it up. Download speeds were the same at about 2 mb/s. This computer came installed with Ubuntu though so I booted into there and checked which drivers were installed.
Booting back into Manjaro I found that newer versions of the iwlwifi driver were installed in /lib/firmware so I removed everything after QuZ-a0-hr-b0-48.ucode and rebooted. This seemed to have fixed the problem. I still have poor signal bars but am getting regular download speeds between 4 mb/s and 7 mb/s.
Why removing newer drivers fixed the problem? I have no idea, but it works.