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Comment by Giorgi | Hacker News Reader

Ugh. I hope there will be Wi-Fi modules available for current laptop upgrade..

You can grab an Intel BE200 module (EDIT: which may be platform dependent, see below) or similar for about 30 bucks. For latest generation client side Wi-Fi cards Intel has traditionally had the better quality options on the driver side, not to give an illusion the cards and driver are perfect though. The limitation is you can't have a fully integrated system, like a MacBook. If the storage is upgradeable there is a high chance the Wi-Fi is.

Is it a real wifi? Or is it the same old ax200 story with AP only in 2.4GHz mode?

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000...

I prefer real WiFi.

I believe it's another client only card. For the AP side I'd recommend a Qualcomm 4x4 but it's unlikely to fit in laptops.

Realtek RTL8922A and RTL8952A based cards will support AP mode, I'm sure. The driver (rtw89) got upstreamed a while ago and support for the new chip got added this Linux kernel release cycle. Hopefully the new generation modules will be available soon, too...

I use the previous generation RTL8852A in my homegrown wifi router, and it works nicely as AP with the same driver and hostapd. The modules are small, and fit to laptops. (the ones I buy are actually some stock for laptops, that gets re-sold as spare parts I think)

Cheaper than the Qualcomm wifi chips, too.

Yeah plenty of client cards have AP mode firmware, I don't recommend it though unless you want a particularly low end AP (outside of the use case of a fully open firmware AP, in which case fully open firmware older cards are generally the only way).

Do you have any specifics for these particular devices? Have you inspected the driver and firmware and found it lacking? Or did you test them and something came up?

Internet is full of bad experiences, but mostly from windows laptop users and from 2-3 years ago, around the time the driver was being upstreamed to Linux. It has been solid and growing in features ever since. Throughtput is pretty nice 500mbit/s for a single 80MHz channel setup I'm using and stable.

There's no other choice for actively manufacturer supported wifi device usable for AP for Linux anyway. Broadcom drivers are unsupported for years, and firmware heavy with lack of firmware updates from manufacturer. Bad combo. Intel is not for APs. And that's about it.

Is it WiFi 7 certified? Or at least can I trust that it will be? I don't have experience with Intel wifi cards

The Wi-Fi 7 certified program only started a few days ago so nothing is through certification yet. That said Intels adapters up til this point have always been and . They already have driver support in Linux as well.

Weirdly and notably BE200 is not compatible at all with AMD platforms. The system might not even POST, so the issue is not about driver support.

it's always driver support.

just because everyone convinced you too use uefi as your true base OS doesn't mean it's not a driver issue. no matter how much you try to cover your own eyes.

same with cpu and microcode.

> > is not compatible at all with AMD platforms

> it's always driver support.

Not necessarily, if it's an Intel module it might be a CNVi module instead of normal PCIe module, meaning it can only work on Intel platforms (because half of the WiFi hardware is actually within the CPU/chipset; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNVi for more information).

nah. it's available in m2 pcie and usb.

plain old crappy software (driver) which you are not supposed to have access (despite all the filling being likely based on gpl)

That is quite the note, thanks for the heads up!

I'd give it a few months.

Both laptops (sans Apple) and desktop PCs (even USFFs) tend to use the NGFF M2.2230 form factor cards, typically with two antenna connectors.

Yes, even your super fancy high-end desktop PC motherboard ultimately has an NGFF M2.2230 WiFi and BlueTooth combo card plugged in somewhere. It might be ultimately buried under a large VRM or other heatsink, but it's there nonetheless. Granted, replacing these sometimes necessitates entirely removing the motherboard from the case.

Note for desktop PCs that you'll likely hook up an actual antennas to the RP-SMA connectors on the rear IO panel. Especially so if you're looking to take advantage of 6GHz spectrum. These antennas are a far less popular include with motherboards (even high end ones) than years ago, but they're generally only about $15-20 to purchase if you need better signal and range.

Has that ever happened?

most non-apple laptops have a slot you can put a wifi card...

Some lock you to pre-selected card models via arbitrary BIOS whitelists. (Will not even boot until you remove the card again.) Beware.

Apple laptops used to have an extension slot like that too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirPort#AirPort_802.11b_card

used to be you could swap out mini pci-e wifi modules. Intel makes good ones as well as a number of other manufacturers. They sometimes have connectable antenna that snake around the case.

Sure, Wi-Fi modules are about as commonly upgradeable as storage in laptops.

My (current) 5-6 year old Lenovo ideapad came with some garbage wifi card that used to get disconnected every 2-3 hours. I swapped it out with an Intel card for around $30 iirc and still happy with it.

The last several laptops I've used have had swappable WiFi modules.

Yeah, lots of laptops have small wifi cards in them using a standard connector that are easily swappable (uses same connector as M.2 SSD's).

I was thinking Framework USB C modules but this is a good surprise.

it's pretty rare I see wifi cards in thin-and-light laptops these days unfortunately.

Laptops, largely, have become SoC's; at least for the most popular lines of business laptops (and I include Macbooks in that).

Things like the Thinkpad X1 Carbon and Surface's (incl. surface book) etc;

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