do you know whether the killswitch still works with the Intel 9260 Wireless-AC 9260NGW ?
Just imagine the killswitch “cutting the wire in half”. It doesn’t care what card you have, or what OS you have (even if Windows) - it’s a physical switch that disconnects the data wires that are crucial for the card to work.
that’s what I thought, but then I read this post by Nicole Faerber: Ability to swap out components like wifi cards?
But depending on the card type you may also loose the WiFi kill switch feature - seems that not all NGFF cards support a kill-switch signal.
If it is a card. If it’s just a chip on the board or part of a chip that does other things, it may be more difficult to cut the wire in half, metaphorically speaking.
I put an Intel 8260 in my Librem 15 v3 within the first month and I can confirm that the killswitch no longer works after that upgrade. Still worth it as the crappy wifi the laptop shipped with was unbearable.
I just installed an Intel 9260 ($20 on Amazon Prime) in my Librem 15 v4 and, voila! Excellent wifi.
The kill switch works.
Get the proprietary firmware from Intel and copy to /lib/firmware
Also, be careful when removing and reattaching the very small connectors on the antenna cables. They take very little pressure but they need to be aligned just so. In case you forget, the gray wire goes closer to the hinge.
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That’s the sucky bit. Fast compromised communication or slow private communication. We shouldn’t have to make that choice.
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So it seems like the fix to this moderately/majorly annoying issue is to replace the wifi chip?
Will someone at Purism please suggest a list of possible replacement chips they recommend (Librem 13 and 15) that do not compromise their free/open mission? I imagine there will have been some sort of short list when initially selecting the hardware.
In general, when replacing/upgrading hardware, I’m sure the community would appreciate if Purism were to host or curate such lists.
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If there were alternative modules with better performance and free drivers, they would use them.
The problem is not the module, it’s the free driver needing optimization. You can also use the proprietary driver, but Purism can’t (and doesn’t want to) ship it.
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Not for me, and I think for at least some others. I’m using the non-free driver and reception is still terrible.
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reception has to do with the power of the signal and how it get’s transmitted/received so it’s more a proximity/hardware engineering problem than a linux-kernel-driver-module problem.
SOME aspects are indeed fixed and present in proprietary firmware but they could be present in the free-software ones if the manufacturers would AT-LEAST hand over proper documentation of the hardware.
So I replaced my Intel 8260 with an Intel 9260 in my Librem 15v3 and the difference was astounding.
- Wireless KIllswitch works again.
- Laptop appears to correctly enable the 9260 even during a cold boot (8260 required a warm reboot cycle to work)
- 8260 was having problems for me in kernel 5.1 that required me to turn wifi off and back on again to bring it back online occasionally. 9260 thus far does not appear to have this issue.
All in all, I’d say if you are looking for a better wireless module for your Librem 13 or 15 and you don’t mind a firmware blob, the Intel 9260 makes for an excellent choice. Thanks for sharing this info with me!
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Steven, if you don’t see the file, then create it:
sudo echo "wifi.powersave = 2" > /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/default-wifi-powersave-on.conf
Then, reboot. Does that change anything?
Amosbatto,
I sent my device in a few weeks ago and with the team’s help they found out I had a faulty wifi card. They will be sending it back to me very soon. When I get it back, hopefully all will be right with the world.
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Has there been any word whether Redpine Signal’s Wi-Fi/Bluetooth with free Linux drivers will be ready for the Librem 5? I assume that Purism decided to use SDIO to communicate with the Wi-Fi, so that it doesn’t have to use the crappy Atheros Wi-Fi chip.
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let’s hope so 
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If there were alternative modules with better performance and free drivers, they would use them.
That is a little strange however. I think that for the ath9k series, the ath9k was the only driver available and the proprietary driver long abandoned.
I say this, because there are ath9k based chips, where the oss kernel driver is the only option, and even goes in combination with the open firmware from qualcom themselves: https://github.com/qca/open-ath9k-htc-firmware
Granted, no driver is perfect, and some extra work simply may be needed or omitted here. But I don’t think the chips are that horrible by themselves. Buggy firmware is usually the cause (but again, I’m only familiar with devices using the open sourced firmware).
Actually there are alternatives using fully free firmware. ThinkPenguin has put in a lot of work negotiating with Atheros to be able to sell wireless devices with fully free firmware, and they’ve been selling them for several years. Their hardware is certified by the FSF: https://ryf.fsf.org
I’ve replaced the Librem 13 laptop Atheros WiFi card with ThinkPenguin’s Wireless N M.2 NGFF Card v2 (TPE-M2NCRD2) which is a newer Atheros model. It looks like this card hasn’t been stamped as RYF from the FSF yet, but they mention like their other cards that it doesn’t use proprietary firmware or need proprietary drivers. From looking at NetworkManager’s Connection Information I see that the burst speed now frequently hits at least 72 Mb/s at times whereas the original card wouldn’t cross 6 Mb/s. I still need to test that this card maintains a decent connection when video conferencing; so far it looks promising.
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This is unacceptable for me, I don’t want to buy a new laptop and have to worry about replacing parts for basic functionality. If Purism is going to insist on just using freeware than as a company its incumbent upon you to come up with an in house solution built into the Pure OS, which means hire some more in house talent on the software front. But having your product ship to customers with hardware that is not completely functional should never be an option. I love Purism librem hardware design but they seem like they still need to do a lot of work on the software front.
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New Librem15, terrible WiFi here, too. I looked at the ThinkPenguin card ~$60. Intel9260 ~$15 free deiivery tomorrow. I am good with swapping hardware. Not sure how to get/install the firmware blob; clearly I’ll have to snag it before I pull the old WiFi card. Did you ever write that tutorial or would you like some help doing that?