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Same distribution, but different DE. Wifi works in one, but not in the other. (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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Hi everyone!

I've been enjoying Gnome for the last 5 years, mainly in Fedora Workstation. Lately, I've been feeling a scratch to try something else after a few annoyances with notifications or the file manager.

I've also been using KDE in Steam OS on my Steam Deck, but something doesn't feel right even if I managed to reproduce my Gnome workflow in it.

I thought that Cosmic could be the perfect middle ground and I wanted to dual boot it alongside Fedora Workstation on my second computer, an upgraded Mac Book Pro from 2012. As I enjoy Fedora, I downloaded the Fedora Cosmic Atomic version.

On this computer, you normally have to enable RPM fusion to get the broadcom drivers for the wifi. I followed the instructions related to os-tree based systems with no luck. Then I thought, let's just download the normal Fedora Cosmic as I don't need an immutable distro and the commands should be the same as for Workstation.

Despite, managing to get the Broadcom drivers, I never managed to get the wifi working in Fedora Cosmic.

I might be stupid, but I don't understand why as it's the same distro and just a different DE. Doe's anyone have an explanation?

It might be a sign that I should just live with the minor annoyances I get in Gnome, but some things looked really good in Cosmic and I'd love to dual boot it for a while..

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[–] 2 points 7 months ago

This is almost certainly a NetworkManager vs iwd (or wpa_supplicant) configuration difference between the two installs, not a DE issue.

Here is how to debug it:

  1. Check which WiFi backend each install uses:

    # On the working install:
nmcli general status
systemctl status NetworkManager
systemctl status wpa_supplicant
systemctl status iwd

    Do the same on the broken one and compare.

  2. Check if the WiFi adapter is even detected:

    ip link show
rfkill list

    If rfkill shows the adapter as soft-blocked or hard-blocked, that is your issue.

  3. Check firmware:

    dmesg | grep -i firmware
dmesg | grep -i wifi
dmesg | grep -i iwl  # if Intel

    Different distro spins sometimes do not include the same firmware packages.

  4. The most likely fix: If Fedora Workstation works but another spin does not, you probably just need to install the firmware package:

    sudo dnf install linux-firmware

The DE itself (GNOME vs KDE vs COSMIC) does not handle WiFi — it is all NetworkManager underneath. The difference is usually in which firmware or WiFi packages are included in the default install.

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