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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Wi-Fi connectivity issues resolved by dropping wpa_supplicant in favour of iwd (lemmy.ml)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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My desktop PC is the only machine in the house having Wi-Fi connectivity issues (connects fine, but drops out randomly after a few minutes or sometimes a few hours)

I think wpa_supplicant is getting confused and thinks signal strength is poor (I have a Netgear mesh, but this seems increasingly common, so it's weird for that to be the issue)

I did pick up a TP-Link USB Wi-Fi adapter, but can reproduce the same connectivity issues

The fix was switching away from wpa_supplicant in favour of iwd, which seems rock solid in comparison

I'm sure there's a way to fix wpa_supplicant, but it's man pages only seem to list the options without actually describing what they do, which seems sort of poor considering how old the project is 🤷

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago

A somehow old (2021) but interesting article about why the community is moving from wpa-supplicant to iwd: https://www.linux-magazine.com/Issues/2021/243/iNet-Wireless-Daemon

Here is an excerpt of interest: "The description of the iwd project on www.kernel.org highlights simplicity as an important factor behind iwd's recent rise: "The core goal of the project is to optimize resource utilization: storage, runtime memory, and link-time costs. This is accomplished by not depending on any external libraries and utilizing features provided by the Linux Kernel to the maximum extent possible. The result is a self-contained environment that only depends on the Linux Kernel and the runtime C library.""

ArchLinux and Ubuntu respectively tested iwd on July 2020 and in Ubuntu 20.10.