Solution to my Thinkpad E16 Wi-Fi Woes
Continued From: https://startrek.website/post/13283869 https://startrek.website/post/14075369
I managed to fix the one biggest gripe about my Thinkpad E16: the RTL8852BE Wi-Fi controller randomly dropping out. I actually found this a few days ago, but I had forgotten where I put the file I had edited. You put a file in modprobe.d called 70-rtw89.conf. Both /etc/modprobe.d/ and /usr/lib/modprobe.d work - I used the latter, but for the sake of conventions, you should probably use the former.
You then put in these options for the rtw89 module: options rtw89_pci disable_clkreq=y disable_aspm_l1=y disable_aspm_l1ss=y
Now, my Thinkpad is a fully functional Linux laptop. I will be docking it to an 8 from my initial score of 8.5, but I'm back to liking it for now. If you apply the fix, be sure to update the firmware as well - some older distros have an old version that works but returns a lot of journalctl error on this card.
Update: What do you know! The updated firmware-realtek just went into backports!
Thanks, https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-oem-6.1/+bug/2017277
Realtek wifi is the bane of open source driver
As I have learned the hard way, it truly is.
I have 8723be, not only it randomly disconnects but also it sometimes drops to 30 KB/s requiring a reconnect and has bad signal reception even on Windows. Ethernet 4 life.
That first part sounds like software/firmware stuff like mine, but the second part almost sounds like an antenna design issue.
Wait till you see a Mediatek
I have P14s. I simply replaced the wifi card with an Intel AX200. Problem solved!
A lot of the modern thinkpads have the wifi module soldered to the motherboard nowadays unfortunately. Sad that they would use these crappy realtek cards in the first place as well.
According to the repair manual, my Wi-Fi card is actually replaceable, at least physically. I don’t know if Lenovo still does BIOS whitelists of cards like they used to (I think they did remove it a few years back.), but their OEM parts website has a diverse selection if this fix were ever to break.
I’d say other than the bottom being a bother to remove (and the keyboard not being designed to be replaced, though after some research, it seems possible), this is a surprisingly repairable laptop for how recent it it. It has dual SSD bays and a DIMM slot.
Oh that's good then. I think they stopped using whitelists a while ago, so if it is slotted you can probably replace it with anything. Maybe they reversed course on soldered modules then, or perhaps it only applied to some models. I looked into specs of the T16 at some point, and that one had soldered wifi module.