Wifi: Intel Wireless 8265 barely working in 6.0 Rock

Support
,
1

Hello,

Requirements:

I have Searched the forum for my issue and found nothing related or helpful
I have checked the Resources category (Resources Index)
I have reviewed the Wiki for relevant information
I have read the the Release Notes and Errata

OpenMandriva Lx version:

6.0 Rock

Desktop environment (KDE, LXQT…):

KDE Plasma 6.3.4, on X11

Description of the issue (screenshots if relevant):

I saw activity here in English-language Support in April of this year about wifi not being recognized at all, and that an upstream fix in the kernel, patched in at OM, fixed it. This is different, because my wifi was instantly recognized but is working slowly and intermittently.

Wifi works but is extremely slow.

The system tray display for wifi never shows more than one arc for signal and sometimes shows none while trying to reconnect.

dnf activity sometimes waited and timed out during a system update and an installation of a new-to-this-system package that had several new-to-this-system dependencies (from the OM 6.0 Rock repository).

My VPN’s app (Proton) sometimes shows a loss of connection.

My Android smartphone has been connected to wifi at full strength the whole time.

Would updating firmware from Intel help me?

Thanks.

Edit: My repository setting is for Rock, honest!

Relevant information (hardware involved, software version, logs or output…):

Laptop computer: Dell 7480

From the KDE Plasma Info Center, under PCI:

02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless 8265 / 8275 (rev 78)
Subsystem: Intel Corporation Device 0050
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 133
Memory at ec000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K]
Capabilities:
Kernel driver in use: iwlwifi
Kernel modules: iwlwifi

2

You could try checking to see if the iwlwifi-agn-ucode package which contains iwlwifi firmware microcode is installed using: dnf info iwlwifi-agn-ucode

$ dnf info iwlwifi-agn-ucode
Last metadata expiration check: 0:09:12 ago on Thu 19 Jun 2025 20:14:05 BST.
Installed Packages
Name         : iwlwifi-agn-ucode
Version      : 20250413
Release      : 1
Architecture : noarch
Size         : 89 M
Source       : kernel-firmware-20250413-1.src.rpm
Repository   : @System
From repo    : release-znver1
Summary      : Nonfree iwlwifi firmware files for the Linux kernel
URL          : https://www.kernel.org/
License      : GPLv2
Description  : This package contains all the iwlwifi wireless firmware files
             : supported by the iwlwifi kernel driver. That means all of:
             : iwlwifi-1xx/1000/2xxx/5xxx/6xxx*.ucode firmwares.

If it is not installed, then you could go ahead and install it to see if that results in any change: sudo dnf in iwlwifi-agn-ucode followed by rebooting afterwards and see if that makes any difference.

You may find that the iwlwifi-agn-ucode package is already installed, in which case this issue will need further troubleshooting.

1 Like
3

Thank you @uro . I did
$ dnf info iwlwifi-agn-ucode
and I got

Description  : This package contains all the iwlwifi wireless firmware files
             : supported by the iwlwifi kernel driver. That means all of:
             : iwlwifi-1xx/1000/2xxx/5xxx/6xxx*.ucode firmwares.

What should I look at next?

4

If you run dnf info iwlwifi-agn-ucode look for the line that says Installed size : 89.0 MiB.

Or run rpm -qa | grep iwlwifi. That command lists any installed rpm’s with iwlwifi in the package name like this on my laptop (Cooker system):

$ rpm -qa | grep iwlwifi
iwlwifi-agn-ucode-20250413-1.noarch
5

That is a fairly old wireless device, the driver was added to Linux kernel 4.6 which was a long time ago.

First try disconnecting and reconnecting the wifi connection with out the VPN enabled and see if that helps. If it does then try with the VPN again

Or you can try removing the current wireless connection and rebooting and setting a new connection. You can go to SystemSettings>Networking>Wifi and Internet to remove the current connection. Then reboot, select the network icon in Menu Panel system tray, select your connection, click on it and follow what NetworkManager tells you to do to reconfigure your connection. NetworkManager can be finicky or persnickety sometimes.

One can find SystemSettings>Networking>Wifi from the wifi icon in the dialog window that pops up in the upper right hand corner.

If none of this helps there are more technical things to get into.

Edit: Oh, maybe a long shot, but sometimes I see the wifi icon with a tiny red ?. If you see that and run the command nmcli g you will see under CONNECTIVITY the work limited you want that to be full not limited. For me this corrects that, fortunately rare, problem: Run:

nmcli networking connectivity check

and you should see:

$ nmcli g
STATE      CONNECTIVITY  WIFI-HW  WIFI     WWAN-HW  WWAN     METERED
connected  full          enabled  enabled  missing  enabled  no (guessed)
6

Thank you @ben79 .

I ran
dnf info iwlwifi-agn-ucode

and got

Size         : 89 M
Source       : kernel-firmware-20250413-1.src.rpm

While not connected to my VPN (and not having the VPN app running) I pressed the keyboard wifi on/off switch, waited for the system tray to display no network connection, then pressed the switch again to turn wifi on. Wifi came back on, 3 out of 4 arcs of signal strength lit up in the system tray display for about two seconds, and then only one arc was lit from then until now a few minutes later.

I ran
nmcli g

and got

STATE      CONNECTIVITY  WIFI-HW  WIFI     WWAN-HW  WWAN     METERED      
connected  full          enabled  enabled  missing  enabled  no (guessed)

Now I am about to remove the system setting for my wi-fi connection, reboot, and re-establish it in NetworkManager.

7

I removed the system setting for my wifi connection, rebooted, and re-established that connection. No improvement in wifi behavior happened.

The internet service in my apartment building belongs to the landlord, and the equipment is one modem and one wifi router. I don’t want to get my own service, and I can’t adjust which exact frequency band the router uses (a tip I’ve heard of when many close neighbors’ wifi routers happen to use the same frequency band).

Edit: my Android smartphone’s wifi connection works just fine.

Edit: Simple but temporary hack: I moved my laptop computer, chair and laptop stand to a different part of the room, by the wall of the building’s stairwell (the wifi signal comes from the stairwell), and got better wifi behavior. Unfortunately, this is not a convenient part of the room for a few reasons. Does my laptop’s wifi adapter just have a weak signal?

8

So the temporary hack indicates the problem might be the strength of the signal from the router to your apartment or might be the wifi device receiving the signal. Wifi devices are receivers with antennas so either the receiver or the antenna could be a factor. But I can not say what is a fact here.

Also this is not related to the previous issue back in April. The issue in April was obviously something missing from the kernel, but I forgot the details of that. My guess is this his a hardware issue with either the router or wifi device, but this is only speculation. If you are in a position to do so perhaps upgrading the wife card or device might be worthwhile. There has been a lot of progress in wifi hardware since Intel 8265,

I wish I could have been more help. There are people in this forum and at OpenMandriva Chat that know more than I do.

9

Thank you @ben79 .