My laptop has a Realtek RTW89 Wi‑Fi card that worked reliably for months, then suddenly became unstable even though I didn't knowingly change or update anything. I've tested Fedora, Ubuntu, and Linux Mint. On installed systems, Wi‑Fi either refuses to work or functions for only a few minutes before dropping out. I've tried disabling power saving, installing different drivers, loading modules with modprobe, and using DKMS packages, but nothing has provided a lasting fix. Interestingly, the card works normally from Ubuntu and Linux Mint live USB environments, so I'm wondering whether the problem is related to the installed kernel, driver versions, or NetworkManager rather than a specific distribution. What should I check next?
3 Answers
It’s still worth keeping hardware failure on the list, even if the live systems work. A card can behave differently depending on power management, temperature, firmware, or how aggressively the driver uses it. Test the live USB for a long period under the same conditions, including heavy downloads and suspend/resume. Also check the BIOS wireless settings and whether the installed system is using the same firmware files as the live environment.
The fact that it works from live USBs is an important clue. Compare the kernel and driver versions used by the live environments with the installed systems. An RTW89 issue can be caused by a regression or a mismatch between the kernel, firmware package, and driver. Check the kernel log with `journalctl -k` or `dmesg` while the connection fails, looking for firmware crashes, resets, timeouts, or repeated disconnects. That should help identify whether this is a driver problem rather than NetworkManager itself.
That makes sense. The live USB environments were Ubuntu and Mint, so I’ll compare their kernel and firmware versions with the installed systems and check the logs immediately after a dropout.
Since several distributions show the same behavior, NetworkManager is probably not the root cause. You can test that by checking whether the wireless interface itself remains present and associated when NetworkManager reports a failure. If the interface disappears or the kernel reports a device reset, changing network-management software won’t fix it. If the interface stays connected but name resolution or routing breaks, then NetworkManager or the connection profile becomes more likely. Capture the output of `ip link`, `iw dev`, and the kernel log both before and after the failure.
I’ll run a longer stress test from a live USB instead of assuming that a short successful session proves the card is fine. It would also be useful to see whether suspend or high traffic triggers the failure.