I have an oldish Dell Latitude 7480 which doesn’t meet the requirements for upgrade to Windows 11 so I thought I’d take the opportunity to install Linux on it as I only really need it for day to day web stuff / studying / media and light gaming.

My first choice was Linux Mint but, for some reason it would not recognise that the laptop had a wifi card. So I tried Manjaro but felt Arch wasn’t for me so opted for Pop_OS and whilst everything I want works I thought I’d use the time to distro hop live environments to see what else was out there.

I know live envs doesn’t give you the full picture but to be honest I was more interested in the aesthetic appeal of the DE.

Where my curiosity lies is this, from my understanding Linux Mint is based on underlying Ubuntu as is Pop_OS, so how come both Pop_OS and Ubuntu recognise the wi-fi card out of the box so to speak but Mint doesn’t.

This is the wifi card in question:

   description: Wireless interface
   product: Wireless 8265 / 8275
   vendor: Intel Corporation
   physical id: 0
   bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0
   logical name: wlp2s0
   version: 78
   serial: cc:2f:71:ec:52:b1
   width: 64 bits
   clock: 33MHz
   capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
   configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlwifi driverversion=6.6.6-76060606-generic firmware=36.ca7b901d.0 8265-36.ucode ip=192.168.1.6 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11
   resources: irq:131 memory:ec000000-ec001fff

And with this in mind, does anyone have any idea how to get this wi-fi card working with Mint, I’m assuming I need a drive which the other drivers have but Mint, for whatever reason, doesn’t have.

Update:

I thought it would be easier to edit the post than reply to you all individually and thanks to everyone who took the time to respond so quickly.

I’ve just re-tried with the latest version 21.3 and it all works, maybe by newbie brain did something wrong with the first install.

I’ll probably stick with Pop_OS as it does what I need and I quite like the Gnome interface.

But again, thank you all for your input it’s awesome to know that swift help is available for idiots newbies like me.

    • Bitrot@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      3·
      10 months ago

      It will always depend on the specific device model. I am primarily talking about the iwlwifi drivers that are already bundled in the kernel. If a device is too new, the solution is usually to use a new kernel (like the Debian backports kernel). Firmware for those drivers did not used to be included in standard Debian, but is now. Other devices with out of tree drivers will need a driver installed. I have to do this routinely with a realtek usb wifi nic that only has drivers on GitHub.

        • www-gem
          3·
          10 months ago

          Right, nobody said it’s never needed (but it should be rare, especially for WiFi). What’s weird is that on this item link itself it’s stated that “Linux drivers are part of the upstream Linux kernel.” And from the table there the driver should be available unless you’re running a pretty old kernel.

            • www-gem
              2·
              10 months ago

              I’ve been biased in my interpretations because of professional deformation where we use “should” as “you have to do it unless exceptional situations that prevent you to comply”.