Q4OS Forum

Severus

Member

Registered: 2020-05-27

Posts: 27

For the Love of Netbooks, Please include Intel firmware on All ISOs

The goal is to spread Linux is it not?
The goal is to spread Q4OS is it not?
Netbooks have no ethernet; this is literally a feature and requirement of netbooks.
They only have the network card they come with.
Many distros make the mistake of not including the Intel firmware by default, don't be one of them.
It's all nice and dandy that we want to keep the iso small, but more importantly one needs to be able to connect.
Also on the 32 bit image which is the image in question (3.12 32 bit), it also uses 4.19 even further reducing ability to connect wirelessly.

The decision not to include the Intel firmware on all ISOs by default is not a good one and popular stupid decision amongst many distributions.  You might say image is for old computers which is only partly true since it's also for computers with 4GB of ram i.e., almost every netbook in existence.

Please fix the iso in question and in the future include Intel linux firmware.

q4osteam

Q4OS Team

Registered: 2015-12-06

Posts: 4,501

Website

Re: For the Love of Netbooks, Please include Intel firmware on All ISOs

Would you have a specific firmware package in mind ?

Severus

Member

Registered: 2020-05-27

Posts: 27

Re: For the Love of Netbooks, Please include Intel firmware on All ISOs

A few moment, running tests verifying culprit.

Severus

Member

Registered: 2020-05-27

Posts: 27

Re: For the Love of Netbooks, Please include Intel firmware on All ISOs

At long last I have concluded my analysis.
You do include all fundamental wireless firmware, but they are a little dated from what is available.
I was experiencing some hardware difficulties which was unexpected.
After resolving this regarding RTL8822BE,

for 4.1   kernel 5.5.0-2                  firmware version 20190717 - Fail (should succeed)
but 3.12 kernel 4.19.0-10-AMD64    firmware version 20190114 - Success
     3.12 kernel4.19.0-10-686 32-bit firmware version 20190114 - Success

Tails is always the gold standard when it comes to wireless support; matching them is more than sufficient.
Two things I have noticed in this regard, their firmware is more recent; firmware-iwlwifi 20200619-1 .  Why don't you use the same one? Tails is Debian.  Second, they use very recent kernels in their most recent release 5.7, and with regard to the wireless cards I have in my possession they are handled by kernel 5.1 and 5.2 respectively which is why it is a little surprising that it did not work in the 4.1 release which includes kernel 5.5 though it is a testing release.  In summary, although 4.19 is a faster kernel for Intel hardware, it excludes newer wifi drivers from the kernel thus the latest stable kernel should be used instead 5.4.63 according to kernel.org, along with the latest firmware; steal it from Tails if you must.  Of note, since I went through hell just to get one of the adapters working, I did not bother testing AX200 which in all likelyhood needs to the newer kernel since its a wifi 6 chip.

Tails Packages:
https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distr … 10#pkglist

Last edited by Severus (2020-09-08 22:28)