I seem to have bad wifi reception with my Librem 14. Is this a common thing? I read about wifi issues with Librem 13 and 15. Does this have to do with hardware?
Of all the devices in my house (including my previous laptop - a 13 year old cheap netbook) Librem 14 has by far the worst reception. I even have no reception at all in my home office (all other devices do have reception) 
Anyone encountering this same problem? Solutions? Hacks? Tweaks?
I have a wonderful laptop that I cannot use at my desk now 
It might be helpful for troubleshooting if you add some details about your network/router settings, such as transmit power, bands in use, 2.4Ghz vs. 5GHz, etc.
I can tell from my experience, that wifi is pretty bad with the Librem 13 and I don’t think this situation will change in the near future because of the driver/firmware situation of newer/better wifi cards.
Thank you for your post. I asked this question some time back about the Librem 14 with only one comment who reported no problems. I am hanging about getting one primarily until this “hotfix” thing goes past, but more importantly to get some reports about wifi which needs to be good for my purposes.
It appears that the wifi will still be a big weakness.
I was, and remain puzzled about the lack of responses to my initial question about this. Maybe most people just don’t use wifi much.
No idea what my settings are, or how to determine them, but zero issues with my L14 WiFi connection home or at work. Haven’t tried anywhere else.
Hi
I have a Librem 14 and don’t have any issues with wifi reception.
Works fine and is no worse than any of my other non-linux devices.
L13 and L14 have same wireless card. Comparing my L13 and L14, L14 has lot better WiFi reception.
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It works wonderfully on my Librem 14. I have fast Wi-Fi and I love it (however, I must admit that my experience is mostly from an 8-year-old Dell Laptop).
Don’t knock the Dell. I have a E6430 & E6530, both are at least of your vintage and they out perform all if my 3 other much later laptops. By a mile.
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I posted this and then went on holiday. So here my late reply. We have both 2.4 Ghz and 5GHz here, 5GHz is a little worse than 2.4 Ghz. Transmit power, bands in use, I’m going to check now. But still, no problems with any other device here but Librem. Maybe I have some bad luck.
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I as well can’t get wifi reception in my apartment. It’s been really frustrating as all our other devices and computers connect no problem except for my new Librem 14. Why is this new 14 just not connecting smoothly? It tries to connect and then fails and asks for passwords or encryption keys but the password is good. It’s had no problem connecting in other people’s homes and coffee shops but I can’t connect in the apartment. And you can imagine how frustrating it’s been to wait so long for an order and then not be able to use it in your own place 
Have you contacted Purism support?
It may help to specify whether you are trying in the 2.4 GHz band or in the 5 GHz band. The former may be preferable. Likewise what WiFi standard your router / equipment is using e.g. 802.11n, 802.11ac, 802.11ax, …
I recall some weirdness with people using non-standard channel widths. Whichever band you are using, use the standard (default) channel width for that band.
Unfortunately WiFi has an absolute mass of settings and it is easy to overlook one.
Your starting point would be the iw or iwlist command to show what wireless networks are in range and what the signal strength is.
Give me ethernet any day … 
Wasn’t one of the major improvements in the L14, over the L13 and L15, that it supports ethernet? Have you tried that?
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Settings of the router for 2.4 GHz band: 802.11 g/n bandwith 20MHz
for 5.0 GHz band: 802.11 n
On both bands I encounter the same problem, but 5.0 GHz sucks a little bit more
If it may be interesting: this is what I get when I use the iwconfig command:
IEEE 802.11 ESSID:“WiFi-2.4-9DBF”
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.447 GHz Access Point: 9C:97:26:A1:9D:BF
Bit Rate=43.3 Mb/s Tx-Power=16 dBm
Retry short limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=43/70 Signal level=-67 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:6 Invalid misc:212 Missed beacon:0
Next things to check off:
- what wireless security have you configured for that SSID?
- anything in the journal / syslog on the L14? (for that matter, anything in the log on the router if it has logging capability?)
PS If you value your privacy, it may be a bad idea to post any MAC address that is associated with you.
You may want to check the antenna connectors on your WiFi card. My Librem 14 had terrible WiFi (couldn’t connect to router in same room next to it) until I opened it up and connected them.