Debian 11-friendly wireless NIC suggestions (difficulty inside)

[Radium_Angel]

I have a Shuttle XPC SH170r^ system with a  Half-size Mini PCI-E slot for a wireless NIC. The ones direct from Shuttle are rather overpriced, so I'd like to get something 3rd party, but I am way out of the loop on what's supported natively by Debian 11 (or any Debian-based distros)

Any suggestions?

[OhioYJ]

I typically buy TP-Link adapters actually.  I have a couple of the Archer T6E cards that I know work in Linux (I'm using Mint primarily) no problems.  From my brief search it looks like their newer Wifi 6 cards work in Linux (Mint / Ubuntu) as well. Both being Debian based, shouldn't be an issue. From what I can tell looks like the newer cards are Intel based (Double check that, could just be the one I searched).

 

Most all these cards include the half height brackets.

[Radium_Angel]

55 minutes ago, OhioYJ said:

half height brackets.

Not a pcie bracketed card...like this instead:

 

 

[Nayr438]

My recommendation is always something Intel based. From my experience they tend to have the least amount of problems and Intel Actively supports Linux.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000005511/wireless.html

 

With that said, I do believe it requires non-free firmware.

https://wiki.debian.org/iwlwifi#supported - iwlwifi (last modified 2020-01-25 02:47:05)

[Herr.Hoefkens]

intel prolly has the best long time record as far as wifi on linux goes.

and you can just get the latest and fit it in th m.2 to pci-e mini adapter

you

[Herr.Hoefkens]

there is no card that works specificly bettor on one distro or another as hardware compat is determent by the kernel , wich is the linux kernel , in 99% of distro's (some also support the freebsd kernel and others but thats besides the question i guess)

this is the intel wireless section in the kernel (v5.19.10) :

the intel AX-series use the Next Gen AGN  (iwlwifi) drivers , in combi with dvm or mvm firware depending

[LloydLynx]

Definitely go Atheros if possible, since most of them don't even require non-free firmware to work.

https://wiki.debian.org/WiFi#Availability_of_compatible_WiFi_chipsets

[Nayr438]

On 9/29/2022 at 2:41 AM, Herr.Hoefkens said:

there is no card that works specificly bettor on one distro or another as hardware compat is determent by the kernel , wich is the linux kernel

This isn't entirely true. Some Distro's have additional patches applied to the kernel and ship additional firmware for hardware support. There is also the whole versioning factor.

 

3 hours ago, LloydLynx said:

Definitely go Atheros if possible, since most of them don't even require non-free firmware to work.

https://wiki.debian.org/WiFi#Availability_of_compatible_WiFi_chipsets

That's only true for Legacy Products up to Wireless N under ath9k/ath5k as listed on that page. Anything recent will likely depend on ath10k and non-free firmware.

My limited experience with ath10k products has personally been pretty poor.