this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2025
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I'm talking about the newest version of Mint I installed last month that is useless because it can't use the drivers for the wifi dongles I own
I had to search that exact list last month and then wait a month for this specific wifi adapter to ship to me when I assumed I could use my brand new realtek usb wifi adapter
If you read through the list you will see the company in the article has the only wifi adapter that claims to actually have support
Imagine, if you had kernel 6.13 (instead of kernel 6.1) you could have just used that dongle..
Edit: 6.8, not 6.1
Mint is u ubuntu based is debian based that uses old kernels.
I think old kernel are fine in server and embedded devices, but not on user desktop.
So I don’t recommend debian based
This is the kind of stuff that makes it really hard to justify using linux.
I was told to use Mint because I was told it would work with modern hardware.
Can I just update the Kernal sonehow? or does that require a reinstall of Mint?
You could install an alternative kernel and install that, but this would most likely fuck your mint install since it is built for that specific major kernel version eg. You only get x.xx.->yy<- updates, rest needs major mint upgrade which they release “late” compared to rolling distros like openSuse Tumbleweed.
Maybe there is an up to date out of tree version of the kernel from lwfinger that you can install, which dongle did you get?
https://github.com/lwfinger
The problems you encounter exist, because of the popular chicken and egg problem, where chip designer ignore linux due to user base and user base is small because of not same chip support as proprietary OSs.
It's a Netgear Nighthawk AXE3000
Linux Mint is currently on 6.8, so at least not 6.1, but it's also not new enough to benefit from all the newly added drivers in 6.13.
Thank you for correction! ☺️