Presumably that’s using a vanilla Intel WiFi card, which you are free to purchase and install in a Librem laptop and compromise your standards - if you judge that the benefits outweigh the risks in your personal circumstances.
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I just went over the whole thread again which delivers a lot of interesting information (spread out over the whole thread).
Short overview:
Purism’s main goal is to deliver free hard- & software. So the choice in wifi-chips and free drivers for Librem 13 and 15 were limited. For some users this combination seemed/s to deliver poor wifi results.
Possible solutions:
- change free to proprietary driver (little better wifi)
- change to an Intel 9260 card + driver (much better wifi + additonally working Bluetooth, but closed software blob -> starting roughly from post 77)
My Librem 13v3 is (manually) customized with 32GB Samsung RAM, Samsung Pro NVMe SSD and Intel 9260 Wifi/Bluetooth and even years after delivery (except a broken hinge which was solved by Purism marvelously) it is running like a charme and a (fast) joy to work with.
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I don’t think that’s an accurate summary.
The “much better wifi” after switching to another card is still absolutely awful wifi. It merely went from “can not connect to wifi 3 meters away with no walls”, to “unlike every other device I can’t use this in much of my house”.
I suspect the metal body of the laptop.
Because come on, no wifi card, free driver or not, could possibly be the cause of that bad an experience.
I had to plug in a shitty USB wifi stick to make it useful.
It is accurate - at least for my experience and my device. My connection is definitely “much better” as i mentioned (i get reception from other rooms) - absolutely usable.
As you mention, there are other devices that have better reception which might be due to the metal housing. But at least with my L13 that definitely doesn’t matter because the differences are not big (anymore - like they used to be with the original wifi-card - which for me used to be stressing).
My wifi is also much better. Still unacceptable (getting reception in other rooms is a really low bar).
Yes, depending on the use case an wifi card change can make it acceptable, but I don’t want this thread to end on a note implying this is simply a fix (albeit one that sacrifices openness).
I’m happy to hear it’s now good enough for you. For me it was still the case that for large transfers, or latency-sensitive stuff (including SSH without glitchy latency on interactivity), I had to walk to the room with the AP. This is not the case with the Lenovo X1 Carbon I’ve since switched to.
I wonder if your internal antenna wires are improperly positioned. Have you checked?
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It’s been a couple of years since I tried to get this to work, but yes they were. Note though that the connectors are “not designed with reconnection in mind” and are typically good for about 30 connections. But could break on the first disconnect if you’re unlucky.
And then you have to buy new antennas and wifi card.
This worked for me (after a reboot)! Thank you!