Hello everyone,
I know that this is a common issue and there is quite a bit of posts about this already. However after researching for over a week now and trying all of the methods that I have come across, I STILL can not get Zorin-OS to recognize my laptops built in WiFi adpater.
I will further preface by saying that I am technically savvy and a current IT support professional, however I am very new and novice to Linux so I apologize if my troubleshooting seems a bit... bad. I am here to get this fixed but to learn as well.
I will outline everything that I know and have tried below. Totally willing to repeat and try some steps again!
Hardware:
Lenovo YOGA 7i 14" Laptop
Part Number 82YL0002US
13th Generation Intel® Core™ i5-1335U Processor
16gb RAM
512gb M.2 Hardrive
Wi-Fi 6E 2x2 AX
Bluetooth® 5.1 or above
Software:
Zorin 16.3 Pro
Zorin 16.3 Lite
Zorin 16 Pro
Zorin 16 Lite
Configuration:
I have just the one hardrive, wiped it completely, and installed Zorin as a standalone OS for every single step of this journey and this is my desired end result, if possible.
Issues:
WiFi does not work because the WiFi adapter can not be recognized by the operating system.
Troubleshooting steps: (mostly in order. Also did a reboot after each step)
- Attempted to check if WiFi was disabled due to any keyboard shortcuts, settings, switches, etc on the laptop. Airplane mode is off and there are no other toggles for my laptop
- Ran updates through a variety of measures
- sudo apt-get update
- sudo apt-get upgrade
- through anything that showed in the software center and the package manager
- tried changing the power-save configuration via:
- sudo gedit /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/default-wifi-powersave-on.conf
- tried manually downloading the drivers from Intels website, unzipping them, and copying them to /lib/firmware
- Installed "backport-iwlwifi" (I don't remember the exact commands)
Outside of troubleshooting in Zorin I tried some other things:
Installed other OS's to see if the card would work at all
- Fedora: worked fine
- Ubuntu: worked fine
- Mint: worked fine
- POP!: worked fine
- Manjaro: worked fine
- Debian: worked fine
- Kali: worked fine
- Tails: worked fine
Which led me to try different Zorin versions. I tried all the way down to 15.0 and none of them, by default, recognized my wifi.
So I tried playing with the kernel versions... Just about every kernel I tried after 5.15 WORKED! The WiFi came up no problem. HOWEVER, in every single kernel version I tested (literally like 15 or more) there was some tradeoff like graphical glitches, sound devices not working, issues with my thunderbolt dock, and other instability.
I since installed POP! because I need to use my machine to study for exams, but I really REALLY want Zorin OS to work because I think it is a lot better. It works just fine on my older ThinkPad with absolutely no issues and perfect stability. But that thing is like 10+ years old and falling apart.
Here are some outputs that I see asked for:
sudo lswh -C network
*-network UNCLAIMED
description: Network controller
product: Intel Corporation
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 14.3
bus info: pci@0000:00:14.3
version: 01
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix cap_list
configuration: latency=0
resources: iomemory:600-5ff memory:601d1d4000-601d1d7fff
*-network
description: Ethernet interface
physical id: 3
bus info: usb@4:3
logical name: enx0050b6bd86bd
serial: 00:50:b6:bd:86:bd
size: 1Gbit/s
capacity: 1Gbit/s
capabilities: ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt 1000bt-fd autonegotiation
configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=ax88179_178a driverversion=5.15.0-88-generic duplex=full ip=###.###.#.# link=yes multicast=yes port=MII speed=1Gbit/s
sudo rfkill
ID TYPE DEVICE SOFT HARD
0 wlan ideapad_wlan unblocked unblocked
1 bluetooth ideapad_bluetooth unblocked unblocked
2 bluetooth hci0 unblocked unblocked
uname -r
5.15.0-88-generic