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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

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Wi-Fi connectivity issues resolved by dropping wpa_supplicant in favour of iwd (lemmy.ml)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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My desktop PC is the only machine in the house having Wi-Fi connectivity issues (connects fine, but drops out randomly after a few minutes or sometimes a few hours)

I think wpa_supplicant is getting confused and thinks signal strength is poor (I have a Netgear mesh, but this seems increasingly common, so it's weird for that to be the issue)

I did pick up a TP-Link USB Wi-Fi adapter, but can reproduce the same connectivity issues

The fix was switching away from wpa_supplicant in favour of iwd, which seems rock solid in comparison

I'm sure there's a way to fix wpa_supplicant, but it's man pages only seem to list the options without actually describing what they do, which seems sort of poor considering how old the project is 🤷

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (3 children)

iwd is great. In fact I'd say take it a step further and get rid of the beast that is NetworkManager as well.

https://austindw.com/networkmanager-is-bloat/

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Tbf you only need iwd, as systemd can take care of the rest. But it's not an option for me on desktop anyway because signal and vpn connection visibility are important for me and that's not possible without a GUI running

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

There are lightweight GUI options for that too. For iwd, you can use iwgtk. For VPN, that would depend on your VPN protocol/service. Some providers like Proton have their own client, others can use something like Wireguard Client (as an example) or something similar depending on your VPN setup.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Though connman supports iwd only partially, no?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

I did actually do this already, separate from working on this issue, but can confirm the intermittent problems with the combination of wpa_supplicant and systemd-networkd