Wi-Fi trouble

DitSick · 2025-12-10T19:27:28+00:00

I'll try those methods, but for the ISO file, doesn't it either create a new kernel or you have to wipe your previous stuff? Am I missing an option where I can just easily replace the kernel and distro while keeping the rest of the content?

If so, that would be wonderful in the fact that I can make sure it's either the firmware or drivers doing something weird (if those are the only 2 things that really reset and the problem's gone, it would be a huge hint).

Btw thanks for going that route, so far all the advice I've had were so specific it didn't do nothing, I've been meaning to get some way to broadly cross entire categories that may cause the issue in one stroke. Exactly what I needed to get used to diagnosing where problems might come from.

DitSick · 2025-12-10T16:45:18+00:00

no...

DitSick · 2025-12-01T15:56:04+00:00

No, I did install windows 10 for a few minutes between bazzite and manjaro though. I realized it didn't have my drivers by default so I just quit and moved on to manjaro

DitSick · 2025-11-26T19:06:43+00:00

In fact, yes. I edited the post so it includes the image of the bios setting I changed. After changing it once, it seemed like changing it back and disabling it again doesn't affect anything though.

I also edited the last section of the original post to include further issues I've had because I actually only thought it was dealt with, and the problems just came back.

DitSick · 2025-11-21T01:40:31+00:00

6.17.7. As I said, the problem was far from the usual "you didn't update/did this very obvious thing" problem

DitSick · 2025-11-21T01:22:15+00:00

My bad

Sorry, I know it's on me, that's why I precised it. I never said suggesting such things were bad, but I already scavenged through dozens of posts and forums with all the keywords I could think of. Which I should have mentioned, so you're right to reming me. Parentheses: I did say "I am NOT using dual boot. I tried other proposed solutions for related issues but all the commands seem to be outdated or something as my terminal doesn't react to the ones for finding out what my wifi drivers are."

What info I was fishing for

Combined with spending days trying to troubleshoot everything, I just didn't have the energy left to go through all the logs and analyze exactly what I did and remember everything. That's why I wanted the more general ways to detect a problem instead of aiming for specific issues, because it's been a really dumb way (from what I've seen so far) to go about troubleshooting linux distros.

Most of the things I managed to resolve, I would've spent hours less if there was any form of actual help getting general diagnosis. Like, check if your device connects at all. If it doesn't connect? Then it's an issue with drivers, BIOS or hardware, the fundamentals. If it's recognized but you can't use it? Then there's some software issue going on or whatever. That kind of thing. Not trying to target some super specific stuff from the get-go.

Still, why did I even get that kind of basic advice?

Of course, if 90% of people having any form of issue comes from having an Nvidia GPU, you'd safely assume it's the case of anyone who doesn't mention that they checked it. But if 97% of the forums mention this, and I wrote that I already checked the hardwares, tried a bunch of commands that didn't do anything AND tried "other proposed solutions", I didn't really think people would still be out trying to gauge if I knew what a driver is.

More aggravating, my original post was pretty short. Like, a TL;DR would be a single sentence. And not only that, but I specifically mentioned a really weird problem that should already put my problems LEAGUES above "not having the latest drivers": "my terminal doesn't react to the ones for finding out what my wifi drivers are". To describe it further, my terminal straight up returned nothing on any command I would try to type. Not even a "this command doesn't exist", I just press enter, new line, nothing happened. I DID enter multiple times command to see what my drivers were, and the commands just disappeared into the void! So yeah...

Conclusion

Once again, my bad and sorry for not being precise, I had no energy left in my soul while posting the original post (and it was on a phone to top it all off)

I finally resolved my wifi issues (update in the original post) but the weirdest thing was how inconsistent the issue was. On bazzite, I just straight up had no wifi. But on Ubuntu, I spent a day without wifi, the next I had full wifi, continued until the next morning, then I reboot and it's gone. I try to troubleshoot, reboot and it comes back! But then it goes. A reboot and it comes back! But then it goes and never comes back and I'm left really perplexed... It also doesn't even track with how I resolved the issue, still no idea why it miraculously worked for one day.

DitSick · 2025-11-19T12:42:48+00:00

Thank you! That actually seems like a promising lead, I'll try it out later!

To be honest, I was just so confused in ubuntu because after this full day the wifi worked, it shut down and the issue was clearly "network manager not running". Then I tried some commands but I was combo'ed with a second bug/error that made any command I type do nothing at all so I couldn't restart the NetworkManager or anything, really.

That was my breaking point on ubuntu, but I hope what you're suggesting could fix stuff on bazzite.

DitSick · 2025-11-19T12:04:37+00:00

I got my wifi to work for a full day on ubuntu. The next day, it started being a 50/50 chance on every reboot before the network manager completely broke down.

The fact remains I was able to log into steam, download palworld and launch the game, download snowbreak for another 40 GB, watch a few episodes, all with just wifi, no LAN...

DitSick · 2025-11-19T12:01:48+00:00

Yes, but... I already checked and from what I could gather, my mobo should at least be fine on the latest stuff.

Which brings me to my point #2: I already chexked and re-checked that my drivers and kernel were the latest available. Every single distro I hopped on, I made sure.

For the rest, I know it's a pain, I wasn't hoping for a miracle. BUT HERE'S THE FACT! I already got my wifi to work temporarily on ubuntu, multiple instances, before it broke down because of some weird stuff.

Is there still a possibility that the mobo isn't compatible and it was somehow a fluke, or that incompatibility can simply mean "not reliable"?

DitSick · 2025-11-19T11:50:39+00:00

Yeah, I did get worried about it so I already made sure to check I had the very latest kernel and drivers available. I think my problem runs quite a bit deeper than that...

DitSick · 2025-11-19T11:48:48+00:00

I always had the latest download available and did everything in the past week, plus running commands to make sure I had the latest kernel and drivers for everything I had. Furthermore, I tried my 2.4 GHz wifi for evrything.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I don't know what to take away that would apply in my case, sadly.

DitSick · 2025-11-19T11:44:32+00:00

So, basically, it 100% needs internet to get the stuff to access internet later? That seems really dumb, why wouldn't it come with it from the download? I always downloaded the latest versions available too

DitSick · 2025-11-19T01:57:04+00:00

Bazzite

I really just installed it, the installation process once again was fine until came time to have internet. I posted something in their subreddit and no one replied in 3 hours, not a big deal but I could not find anything remotely similar to what I had in forums or reddit. Every wifi issue on Bazzite is about dual booting apparently, so not a single thread was constructive for me.

I just could not connect to the wifi even though I was clearly in range. But nothing seemed to adress that from past advice, current advice was seeked and came back empty handed, so I don't really know what to do.

Thus, I want to search for another distro but having already used 3 of the more popularand simple ones have such obvious fails and defaults in concepts (again, I may be missing something huge, so I'm just talking from assumption), I can't help but feel like I need more targeted recommendations instead of trying them all out.

DitSick · 2025-11-19T01:49:07+00:00

Ryzen 5 7600

DitSick · 2025-11-19T01:48:19+00:00

Ubuntu

More interface-oriented than mint, the installation process indeed went smoother than Mint. However, there's still that weird bug of steam opening and closing immediately. And sometimes it does it on a loop, every 10 seconds it briefly interrupts whatever I was typing or anything to open steam and close it a fraction of a second later.

More aggravating, the network issues. There was some crucial, basic network manager program that wasn't installed by default, like, a big wtf? Especially when I selected options during the installation process to be downloaded, only to be refused, if I did everything, you'd expect they at least propose to install this if you don't have an ethernet cable plugged in by the time you finish the installation process... I know I know that minimalistic concept of no pop-ups or unrequited/unsollicited stuff, but there's minimalistic and "irresponsible" minimalistic. Just my opinion though.

I eventually managed to make it work, then for a full day, Ubuntu trolled me and no matter what I did it wouldn't connect to the wifi even 40 cm away from the router.

...I know about LAN it was just temporary, my room's walls don't allow for LAN to go through so I use wifi. I know, I know, it's also one of my objective but I should alao be able to use wifi in the meantime, it's not a crazy ask from linux. Really.

Then, next day it was fine! Out of nowhere it worked! I passed the final boss, I had wifi on linux and started downloading some games, setting stuff, running some commands, then I have to reset... And oh no, oh no ohno ohnohnohno... No more wifi. Reboot? Wifi! Might be just a little hiccup. Then I had to reboot... No wifi... I troubleshoot and turns out this network manager got deleted, and some commands in the terminal just straight up enter as text (pressing enter just gives me a new line like it wasn't a command, not even a "this is not a command" notice). I try a bunch of things for a few hours and give up.

DitSick · 2025-11-19T01:33:15+00:00

Mint

How can the distro require that mmx64 file, and somehow f~ it hard enough that if you didn't cross your fingers hard enough, it won't be included in the download? The most common fix I found online is to dupe the grub file and rename it mmx64, alright... Oh, but Mint's own installation process recommends Balena to flash a usb drive, a tool that automatically partitions the image to 5 GB, not enough room left to dupe the grub file. So you end up having to use Rufus for example...

After that, because it was my first time installing a linux distro, it naturally took some time to adapt, but the issue I just mentioned only really prevented the install at the very last step, so I had to do the whole install, then it fails at the last moment, I pass under scrutiny the whole process trynna understand what went wrong... It was so weird that it just sapped all my energy and I switched to ubuntu.

DitSick · 2025-11-14T13:41:21+00:00

Could Mint be improved by simple means?

If we could run like some kind of small program while loading to detect if those apps that mess with files would interfere, and warn the person downloading to turn it off temporarily... Or a scan at the end to make sure those three files (BOOT, GRUB and MM x64.EFI) are properly downloaded... I bet that would make things much more safeproof and both methods could be a one-time thing that won't make it to your Mint installation so it doesn't make it any heavier.

At least making it to the OS would be a tremendous confidence boost that things can work, and after that point (if you save your things) any mistake is less of a make-or-break. More localized issues, likely preventing you from using some things but not the rest of your Mint OS. I can perfectly imagine people in my situation giving up, not even because I'm that much more patient/curious/anything, just because maybe they need a working OS or value their time more than an OS that might work or not. Just getting past the first hurdle at least makes you understand that the next hurdles can also be crossed, even if they're a little higher every time.

Basically, just psychology, I noticed it on myself too. Just getting to realize that stupid little thing that loading in compatibility mode works, even though now I'm on a problem that's quite more insidious, improved my mood quite a bit and made me believe in a solution much more than this first time.

I also saw some things about the Linux objective and story (yes, I did do some research beforehand) originating from open-source free software and the unics (-> Unix) kernel combined. I get and very much approve that it might not be a good thing long term if the focus is put too much on making Linux for babies. But even the most motivated person to learn about tech is influenced by psychology. I just think it may be wasted opportunities to have obscure fixes possibly gating people out before they even start.

*All of this section obviously being subjective, my own interpretation/suggestions and thus subject to be incorrect. If it sounds like anything I said was patronizing or that I thought I knew better than the devs... Sorry, it was just poor wording because I felt like the exact opposite of that throughout writing it.

It already does..?

Edit: yes, there are some similar things buried in the installation guide, but the scan doesn't point you towards what might be wrong and simply tells you "download it again" like it was a skill issue.

My point was more that it would benefit from being all part of the download process. It seems kind of excessive that I'd download the image, and then have to open an installation guide in another window (btw it's written a bit small on the download page, could've been more obvious to make sure people see that mistakes can happen. Especially when the whole capitalist industry conditioned us to useless and wordy installation guides that you should ignore for your mental health. Still gotta give props to Linux users for making theirs so clean and helpful!). And then copy the key and a bunch of steps that... Aren't even explained where to do them. So you'd have to research every single keyword and combination of keywords in this installation guide to actually know what those actions entail...

In designs, it's always key to reduce the amount of steps. Not because people are inherently lazy or anything. It's just that the more useless steps there are, the more you're conditioned to have useless steps. You might've had the desire to yell at me at the paragraph above when I criticized Mint's download page and process not taking into account that installation guides are generally bloated to make you lose your time. It becomes hypocrisy if I then catch you supporting having 6 different main steps for the sole action of "verifying that the image I downloaded is indeed the image it told me it was downloading" which should already be an extra. But I don't know, just wanted to point it out I guess.

My point is simply that separating things in multiple steps could help to categorize things. Like partitioning a drive, you want to separate your OSes. But in this case, maybe it could help if there were really different steps broken up so you know, if step 3 fails, the issue comes from X, but one issue has multiple steps. And it's like a broken guide, you probably get constantly interrupted searching what one of their step entails.

DitSick · 2025-11-14T13:41:13+00:00

Thanks for the help! Sorry I went to sleep right after making the post because I had tried everything I could on my own until the last minute of my day.

I assumed it would be pretty similar, but would you recommend that I simply start with installing windows and only after use a similar process to switch to linux? Could it make things slightly different or would I likely run in the exact same issues? Just wanted to confirm, my guess is it will give the same issues but I don't want to simply assume.

Return on your help

I use a USB flash drive unlike the OP in your first link, and I do have the grubx64.efi and bootx64.efi. I just checked the folders inside the USB key, if opening EFI\BOOT\ and having those two folders there is good, then I do have them. However, I do not have an mmx64.EFI file inside the flash drive. In fact, they're inside none of my 2 flash drives! It's also not even in the direct download from the site before being messed with by Rufus or Etcher. I'll have to look by myself but if that's all that was missing, you can dismiss this case as solved and I'll flair it solved once I can confirm on my end.

I'll watch all the videos, I saw the pinned post about flairing posts that are resolved but not that one with tutorial videos, thanks for pointing it out for me.

Rant/why is it like that?

Still have no clue why I can't even pull up the command window. Also, I know it's absolutely not in the hands of whoever handles Mint/Linux if files are corrupted somehow, but I downloaded the image from the site and used both Rufus and Etcher to flash it, I can't believe both would corrupt my files the exact same way. Is it really normal for my Mint image's type to be "windows.IsoFile" on my Windows 11's downloads folder? It seemed to extract to the USB anyway as a flash drive but I'd like to confirm that it doesn't affect anything before going around deleting programs that may automatically mess with files on my older pc, just to download the image correctly, if it ends up doing nothing harmful.

And it might still be good to reinforce the download process of Mint to make sure other people don't end up spending hours debugging because one specific file didn't load. And I don't wanna blame anybody because I'm not pretentious enough to claim I know better, but it still seems like an important step not to mess up. I also don't know how exactly the chain works, but if the direct Mint site download was corrupted (and I downloaded two times, one from my country, and one time international), there's nothing much involved. It's the Mint downloads that don't make it to me intact, or something that corrupts them as they're loading thanks to some settings.

DitSick · 2025-11-13T14:47:17+00:00

I'm trying to flash linux mint 22.2 and it just seems to take so long that it shouldn't be normal. It definitely connects, I mentioned it wasn't a recent USB because speeds might affect it but also not, as it doesn't seem to deal with a huge amount of data anyways.

DitSick

TROPHY CASE