[CONFIGURATION] Change WIFI adapters

[rk4262]

First I would consider this to be one question, others may not, and it may not matter on this board, I"m sure you know where I"m talking about. Anyway for clarity of the situation. I bought this Dell Inspirion laptop a little over a year ago. About 6months in, I started having major crashing problems. I managed to figure out on my own the WIFI adapterwas going out, rather than tearing it apart and finding out it wasn't replaceable I just bought a USB WIFI/Bluetooth adapter then disabled the onboard adapter. Things worked great fro a while. Then I decided to give W11 a try, about a month into that install, problems started up again, and I realized that the two adapters were fighting over which would be the default. Not to mention windows was doing a decent job of kicking the USB in when the onboard spazzed out. I knew from the beginning that W11 will be worse than W8/8.1 but decided to try and get used it, while giving feedback. That didn't last long there is just to much "Change for the sake of Change", which is never good. So I reinstalled Kubuntu, which I used during the 8/8.1 time frame.

So Now I'm running 20.04 Plasma 5.18.5, and I need to disable the onboard adapter, and install the USB adapter, at the moment, the light isn't even flashing like it's not getting any power at all. Yes, the onboard is spazzing out again. Last time I was on Linux, I had a lot of trouble with the command line. If I retyped it 7 or 8 times I could eventually accomplish my task, which is the only reason I didn't just stay with Linux. So If someone could recommend a GUI to do this type thing I would appreciate it. I have tried hardinfo based on what I've read other places, but I can't get it to actually do what I want, or need. If it takes the command line, if someone thinks they have the patience to work with me, just remember warned you LOL.

[claydoh]

First thing is to see if you can disable it in the Bios, this will take care of it at the hardware level, with nothing else to do. This is often an option, but not all will have it.

Next is to find which driver:

lshw -C network

Here is mine:

$ lshw -C network
WARNING: you should run this program as super-user.
*-network                 
description: Wireless interface
product: Killer Wi-Fi 6 AX1650i 160MHz Wireless Network Adapter (201NGW)
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 14.3
bus info: pci@0000:00:14.3
logical name: wlp0s20f3
version: 30
serial: d0:ab:d5:e7:72:73
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlwifi driverversion=5.11.0-27-generic firmware=55.d9698065.0

Note mine shows driver=iwlwifi, yours will probably be different.
We need this so we can figure out which kernel module to blacklist



fwiw, I will almost 100% guarantee that the wifi/bt card is your laptop is replaceable, and probably not overly difficult to do.

[rk4262]

First thing is to see if you can disable it in the Bios, this will take care of it at the hardware level, with nothing else to do. This is often an option, but not all will have it.

I'm sorry I forgot to mention that, in bios I can disable onboard ETHERnet, but not wireless. Which is dumb if you ask me, but it is Dell.

Next is to find which driver:

*-network
description: Wireless interface
product: QCA9377 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter
vendor: Qualcomm Atheros
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0
logical name: wlp2s0
version: 31
serial: 5c:3a:45:34:97:cd
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ath10k_pci driverversion=5.11.0-27-generic firmware=WLAN.TF.2.1-00021-QCARMSWP-1 ip=192.168.1.244 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11
resources: irq:129 memory:91000000-911fffff

fwiw, I will almost 100% guarantee that the wifi/bt card is your laptop is replaceable, and probably not overly difficult to do.

You may very well be right, but I have never had luck replacing anything inside of any brand laptop, especally not a Dell, I've had to buy a new laptop trying to replace something simple, because I didn't unplug something the correct way, and broke the wires, just to be told those wires are not available. A desktop pc, I will tear the motherboard down to the gold plating, never think twice about it, a laptop, forget it, it's less of a headache, and easier on my blood pressure just to buy a new one. )

[claydoh]

Ok, you have the ath10k_pci driver.


Next, browse to the file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf in Dolphin and open it with Kate or Kwrite, and add this to the end of the file:

# Disabling my on-board Atheros WiFi card 
blacklist ath10k_pci

Save the file (you will be prompted for your password), and reboot.
This *should* keep the card from being enabled.

If you need to undo this, just go back and delete the lines that were added.