I apologize if this seems like a trivial matter, but I have a laptop (a Lenovo Ideapad 3 to be exact) and I can’t get WiFi (or Bluetooth) to work on anything other than Ubuntu 23.04 and its flavors. I tried OpenSUSE Leap and Debian 12, both couldn’t detect the built-in WiFi card. I also tried Ubuntu-based distros such as Linux Mint, KDE Neon, and Zorin OS, same problem. I tried Kubuntu 22.04 LTS and even that couldn’t detect the WiFi card! So for the mean time, I’m stuck with using Ubuntu 23.04. Any ideas to get around this? Can I use Ubuntu to figure the exact WiFi card that’s being used then download its driver? If so, how can I do that exactly? Note that my Laptop doesn’t have a built-in Ethernet port, and I don’t want to buy a USB Ethernet adapter only for it not work out of the box either! Any help would be appreciated!
Unlike Windows Linux has almost all drivers already embedded onto the kernel, meaning that 99% of the time you shouldn’t even have to worry about drivers. There are a couple of exceptions to this, most notably NVIDIA GPUs which do require a proprietary driver to be installed for most usecases, and unfortunately some wireless cards as well.
The command lspci like many suggested here will let you know what your computer detects as being plugged in, which would allow you to ask the better question of “what driver do I need for this wireless card”. But here’s the thing, if it works on Ubuntu 23.04 it’s likely the driver is integrated in the kernel already, so it’s highly likely that any other distro with the same kernel version would work as well, you can check the kernel version running uname -a, and you can also try any bleeding edge distro such as Manjaro (so you have a GUI to check the wifi works) to check that other distro a with the same kernel do support it.
In the unlikely scenario Ubuntu 23 is loading an extra driver you can list all kernel modules using lsmod this should tell you exactly what Ubuntu 23 has loaded for it. Then you could see if a package for that module is available for older Ubuntus.
However I have a possibly dumb question, why not use Ubuntu 23.04 if that one works? Why do you want to downgrade the version?
Thank you for the clarification. I already know that most drivers are loaded with the kernel, and it looks like Ubuntu 23.04 is using a slightly newer kernel than other mainstream distros.
What you do once you’re on the 24.04 LTS release is up to you. By that time, other distros will probably also work out of the box too.
That’s a very good question. It is because I was using Kubuntu 23.04, and I was mostly happy with it, except for one small gripe I was facing related to KDE, and I figured if I try a different distro with KDE, I might actually solve it.
If you wish to run Ubuntu 22.04 you should be able to upgrade to kernel 6.2 (by default its on 5.14 IIRC).
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/08/ubuntu-22-04-linux-kernel-6-2
I’m not sure if this is known to you; apologies in advance if I’m stating the bleeding obvious: In Linux drivers come with the kernel. There shouldn’t be any reason, except a few exceptions, to install drivers separately to your kernel. So when Linux folks talk about “the kernel”, they mean “the scheduler, core operating system AND all up-to-date drivers”.
So most likely your HW isn’t supported in older kernels.
When I first installed 22.04 LTS for a 12700T-based micro server, several things didn’t work out of the box. After upgrading to 5.19 everything was in working order though.
Drivers are usually there in the kernel and usually works out of the box. You shouldn’t need to manually install drivers with linux generally (except for proprietary drivers cough nvidia cough). But if your laptop is quite new, you need to have a new enough kernel. That would explain why ubuntu 23.04 works but not not 22.04. The kernel in 22.04 is probably too old to have the drivers for your network interface. Check what kernel version is shipped with ubuntu 23.04 and make sure that whatever distro you try have at least that version. Stable LTS distros often don’t work on brand new hardware.
I understand that. But what’s making me scratch my head is that I tried running Linux Mint 21.2 and Debian 12, both of which to my knowledge were released very recently, and yet both failed to detect my WiFi card. Are they running an older linux kernel?
Yeah they’re running an LTS kernel. Debian 12 is on 6.1 when we’re on about 6.48. I’m not sure about Linux Mint, but I know it uses LTS too so it must be 6.1 or older. Not sure if upgrading the kernel would help you, but just throwing that out there.
Try posting output of lspci command here, gives us more information about your laptop hardware.
You can try searching (google) for the output of lspci or lsusb: like “1234:5678 firmware”. Alternatively, search for your chip in the Linux Wireless data base.
