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I am running a fresh install of Ubuntu 18.04LTS, and I am noticing that I cannot connect to the wifi. The error shown in settings is "Wi-Fi module not detected". How can I go about remedying this issue?

This is what I see checking to see the status of any networking hardware detected.

lshw -C network

  *-network UNCLAIMED       
       description: Network controller
       product: Intel Corporation
       vendor: Intel Corporation
       physical id: 14.3
       bus info: pci@0000:00:14.3
       version: 00
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: cap_list
       configuration: latency=0
       resources: memory:d541c000-d541ffff
HayashiEsme
  • 179

2 Answers2

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The Intel AX201 is a very new wifi module. It requires kernel version 5.2.x as a minimum. However currently, as of December 2019, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS is packaged with a 5.0.x kernel, and will not come with a kernel new enough to support it out of the box till sometime around February 2020. This is why you'll notice the network module being marked as unclaimed. That is to mean that there is no driver attached to it that can run the hardware. While Canonical strives to ensure that new hardware will always get support as soon as possible (these kernel updates are provided as part of the Hardware Enablement stack), computers with this wifi card will currently have to install a pre-release (a beta designed for developers to test their hardware) version of the kernel to gain wifi.

Install the new kernel this way:

sudo apt install linux-generic-hwe-18.04-edge

and you should be on your way. (the -edge denotes that this is the pre-release)

It is worth pointing out that there are many ways to install a kernel - one possibility is to install a kernel directly from the Linux mainline. However this is generally not recommended as this is only used to help test compatibility for future stable releases, and an optimized version for your distro can often be found instead to improve performance. What is best is to install a kernel update developed for your distro and version specifically.

Hope this helps someone in the future!

HayashiEsme
  • 179
1

The wifi driver seems to have intermittent periods of not being detected. I rebooted this morning (I do have secure boot, UEFI secure mode and fast boot turned off as well) and the wifi is being detected fine again. I'll update this if I have any more details.

HayashiEsme
  • 179