Realtek. I was reading that many Realtek chipsets cause intermittent wifi drops, and that since they’re pretty inexpensive, it’s simpler to just get one that works. So, I went with another company that advertises as Linux compatible out of the box, plugged it in, checked it with ‘lsusb’, and saw the exact same Realtek chipset that my old one has.
After dealing with that for a month I swore I’ll never buy a nother PC with a realtek nic. I think I spent like $50-100 more on my latest mobo in order to get Intel + Marvell instead of Realtek.
Not sure if you have the same problem or not, but I had intermittent jitter spikes (and/or complete package drops) every 60 seconds on my Realtek chipset, ran:
sudo iw dev wlan0 set power_save off
And it’s been stable since (just had to make a udev rule to make it persistent across boot)
Realtek only started to develop drivers in the upstream Linux kernel relatively recently, 5 years or so, and only for what was then the newest chipset. Something 88 and two letters but not 88 and other letters (I think CE).
Does Intel WIFI still exist? If so, that is what is probably the best supported chipset.
I have a Mediatek MT7921K, it’s using the mt7921e driver, 3 years ago the chip was new I think and not well supported in linux (problem with init/sleep/resume) but a lot of people fixed it, and mediatek released new firmware, and the driver is rock solid for about 3 years now, I’m using it on my daily driver working PC 8h/day, 0 problem, and use a BLE keyboard and trackball too.
Yeah that’s why I was wondering if their machine was fairly new. I’ve found consistently better driver support with time. I’m genuinely surprised that its an older machine and having these issue.
I gave up on the built-in mediatek wifi chip in my motherboard and just pulled the dedicated wifi card from my old pc. I’m on ethernet now, but man troubleshooting that was not fun.
I even ordered a new chip, which, of course, never showed up.
Are all mediatek’s horrible? I’ve got one in my desktop but it’s just terrible. Randomly crashes my whole pc after a while. And the only way to fix it is to cmos reset the motherboard. It’s forever disabled in the bios now, which also means no Bluetooth sadly. Just wondering if I had bad luck or to always avoid them.
But thankfully they are equal-opportunity ass and suck on all platforms, not just Linux. I’m on bazzite rn because I couldnt get the bluetooth on either fedora OR ubuntu to work at full speed. Granted, my machine is very new, but like. I’m still getting that occasional issue where a bt device connects and the whole system lags.
mediatek?
Realtek. I was reading that many Realtek chipsets cause intermittent wifi drops, and that since they’re pretty inexpensive, it’s simpler to just get one that works. So, I went with another company that advertises as Linux compatible out of the box, plugged it in, checked it with ‘lsusb’, and saw the exact same Realtek chipset that my old one has.
Realtek is just ass in general. I avoid them like the plague.
They’re OK in windows, but I have never had a good experience with them on Linux.
It sounds like you’re not alone, and it’s what I was trying to do too! I just didn’t pay close enough attention to the specs on my new adapter, lol
Lesson learned.
Did the new adapter have the same problems? I know you said it read as the same.
So far… nope. I need to test it some more, but I’m just waiting for it to start happening again.
Especially wired
Ask me how I know
Asus motherboard?
Realtek cards are trash on BSD too.
FreeNAS was my first experience with that…
After dealing with that for a month I swore I’ll never buy a nother PC with a realtek nic. I think I spent like $50-100 more on my latest mobo in order to get Intel + Marvell instead of Realtek.
Not sure if you have the same problem or not, but I had intermittent jitter spikes (and/or complete package drops) every 60 seconds on my Realtek chipset, ran:
sudo iw dev wlan0 set power_save offAnd it’s been stable since (just had to make a udev rule to make it persistent across boot)
If I catch the new one doing it, this is going to be the first thing I try. Thanks
Is it a pretty new machine?
No, very old. A lot of the hardware is from 2013.
Realtek only started to develop drivers in the upstream Linux kernel relatively recently, 5 years or so, and only for what was then the newest chipset. Something 88 and two letters but not 88 and other letters (I think CE).
Does Intel WIFI still exist? If so, that is what is probably the best supported chipset.
Realtek stuff tends to be junk in my experience (even outside of support which is terrible)
I have a Mediatek MT7921K, it’s using the mt7921e driver, 3 years ago the chip was new I think and not well supported in linux (problem with init/sleep/resume) but a lot of people fixed it, and mediatek released new firmware, and the driver is rock solid for about 3 years now, I’m using it on my daily driver working PC 8h/day, 0 problem, and use a BLE keyboard and trackball too.
Yeah that’s why I was wondering if their machine was fairly new. I’ve found consistently better driver support with time. I’m genuinely surprised that its an older machine and having these issue.
I gave up on the built-in mediatek wifi chip in my motherboard and just pulled the dedicated wifi card from my old pc. I’m on ethernet now, but man troubleshooting that was not fun.
I even ordered a new chip, which, of course, never showed up.
Are all mediatek’s horrible? I’ve got one in my desktop but it’s just terrible. Randomly crashes my whole pc after a while. And the only way to fix it is to cmos reset the motherboard. It’s forever disabled in the bios now, which also means no Bluetooth sadly. Just wondering if I had bad luck or to always avoid them.
I’ve had good experience with them especially on OpenWRT
Basically yes.
But thankfully they are equal-opportunity ass and suck on all platforms, not just Linux. I’m on bazzite rn because I couldnt get the bluetooth on either fedora OR ubuntu to work at full speed. Granted, my machine is very new, but like. I’m still getting that occasional issue where a bt device connects and the whole system lags.