Linux noob using mint for the first time, decided to boot from a flash drive before fully installing on my PC, just to try it out first. I’m having issues getting Wi-Fi to work during the live session though; clicking the Wi-Fi icon only brings up Network Settings and Network connections. Network connections lets me try to set it up manually, but I can’t figure out how to get it to connect after putting in all the info I can find for my Wi-Fi. Is this normal? Did I mess up the installation somehow, or is a drivers problem?

Hardware: HP laptop, AMD Ryzen 5 7520U w/ Radeon Graphics (Model # 15-fc0025dx). OS: Linux kernel 5.15.0-91 generic, Linux Mint version 21.3, Cinnamon version 6.0.4. Booted off a flash drive (live session).

edit: I also get the following screen when I try to shut my laptop down from the Mint boot:

  • Successful_Try543@feddit.de
    2·
    5 months ago

    As it might be a driver issue, it may be useful to specify the wifi chip and the used driver as well. You can e.g. identify it from the output of lspci -vv. Also the output from sudo dmesg after trying to connect is often helpful.

    • ComicalMayhem@lemmy.worldOP
      2·
      5 months ago

      did the lspci -vv command, if the network controller is the WiFi chip, then I got: Network Controller: Realtek Semiconductor Con., Ltd. Device b85b. Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 88e6. Flags: fast devsel, IRQ 255, IOMMU group 10 I/O ports at f000 [disabled] [size=256] Memory at fce00000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [disabled] [size=1M] Capabilities: <access denied>

      not sure if that’s the right thing. I also found another command that supposedly returns only the wireless card lspci -vq | grep -i wireless -B 1 -A 5 but that only returns the following line: pcilib: Error reading /sys/bus/PCI/devices/0000:00:08.3/label: Operation not permitted

      I did the sudo dmesg command, but it returned so much info I’m not sure what’s relevant or not. Is there anything specific within the log I should be looking for?

      • Successful_Try543@feddit.de
        3·
        5 months ago

        If sometimes permissions are missing, try putting sudo in front of the command

        The chip seems to be a Realtek b85b. Asking Google showed that there have been issues with this chip previously.

        As I don’t see the driver that is used from the output from lspci -vv (I does display it on my system), I am not sure whether any driver is loaded at all. If the wifi interface is not shown in sudo rfkill --list, which shows all available wireless interfaces, that is probably the case.

        This website also collects some helpful tips for solving issues with Realtek wifi devices on Linux Mint and Ubuntu 22.04, which is the basis of LM.

        Edit: According to this post (in German, however the links are in English) on the issues of somebody with the same wifi chip, it should be working in kernels 6.2 and above.

        I suggest downloading the ‘edge’ version of LM, as it should have newer kernel and firmware.

        • ComicalMayhem@lemmy.worldOP
          3·
          5 months ago

          The sudo rfkill --list command just returns rfkill: unrecognized option. Appending sudo to the beginning of the other command I listed (the -vq | grep one) didn’t work: it returns pcilib: Error reading /sys/bus/PCI/devices/0000:00:08.3/label: Operation not permitted`.

          I’ll check out that site and see if there’s anything there that can help. otherwise I might just format the drive and do a clean install, see if maybe that will fix it.