[PLUG] Wifi Compatibilty and Linux Distro's

[Matt McKenzie]

On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 11:27 AM, Charles Hill <crhpdx at gmail.com> wrote:

> I’ve been distro jumping the last few months, Xubuntu, Linux Mint, Linux
> Mate, “Ubuntu 16.04” just to name a few and I constantly run into Wi-Fi
> connectivity issues. Disconnects, low signal, etc. I’m using a Lenovo
> laptop G50 with the dreaded Realtek RL8723BE wireless card.
>
> What wireless card works well “most” of the time with various distro’s? So
> far I know Realtek and Broadcom cards basically suck without mods and
> hacks.
>
> Thanks,
> CRH
> _______________________________________________
>


FWIW, these distros you have listed here, assuming Linux Mate = Linux Mint,
MATE edition, are all essentially slightly different flavors of the same
base distro- Ubuntu (and thus all based on Debian).

Ubuntu and its relatives are usually fairly good with hardware
compatibility, but for a more different take on things you might try a
distro or few that is not based on Ubuntu (or Debian).

One example as given by Rich in this thread, is Slackware, although it is
mainly geared for more advanced users- so if that isn't you, keep looking.

Some other examples: Fedora, which is the community supported distro that
is based on RedHat, is good for newer users, but also can be tuned for
experts.  It tends to be more cutting edge with the software they track
(including the kernel).
SuSE, which is is another of the big families, might be another good one to
try.
Manjaro, which is a fork of the now defunct Mandrake, another of the big
families of distros from way back when...
All of these (except Slackware) are RPM based, which started with RedHat.
Debian and Ubuntu and its relatives are all DEB based.

Then there are some others, such as Arch, and Gentoo, which are source
based, and definitely not for the faint-of-heart, but are very
customizeable and once setup, can make for a powerful workstation that is
finely tuned to your hardware.

You don't have to install all of them to test it out either, put one or
more of those on a live USB and give em a whirl (one at a time), see if any
of them have better luck with your wifi.

Good luck!


Matt M.
LinuxKnight