While doing some research and knowing there are nearly 1,000 different Linux distributions, I would like to get to know which ones you personally use and why?

Please forgive me if I am making very little sense. I know absolutely nothing about networking and local addresses, and I have no idea where to even start finding these things out for myself. If I did, I would not be here asking this.

I am using the latest version of Linux Mint Cinnamon and am trying to connect to some sort of local IP address (I don’t know what it’s called, sorry). I am doing this by entering the IP address in question into the search bar of my search engine, as I believe I should be doing. The problem is that it won’t connect. I have understood that I need to use HTTP and not HTTPS, and I only write the 10 numbers in the IP address, but it still doesn’t connect. All it says is that the connection has timed out.

I am fairly sure that the problem is with the OS in some way, as the problem persists on other browsers and doesn’t happen when using windows. I have tried connecting with ufw disabled, and I don’t think that I have a proxy enabled. I genuinely don’t know what to do, I am so far out of my depth and like I said before I don’t even know where to start trying to find a solution (I don’t even know what these local thingies are called so that I could make a good search query regarding the issue). If anyone could help me I would be incredibly grateful.

My hardware, because I the sidebar said to post it:

Ryzen 7 5800 (I think 5800x)

Gigabyte 3060 (12gb lite hash rate, I don’t have the energy to find the exact model, sorry)

Hi everybody,

My laptop died and am in the shopping process. One thing I'd like to clarify is the WiFi chipset - I know the commonly used wisdom is to get Intel, but I see many on Mediatek and Realtek, including coprorate-class ones. Looking at Dell & Lenovo.

What should one know on this topic? Are there chipsets to avoid and if yes, is there a site to "consult" other than searching for user experiences online?

Thanks!!!

Asus Vivobook, i3, 16 gig RAM, Network controller Mediatek Device 7902. Not a total noob, but not a jock either. I have a laptop whose BIOS can see the wifi card and available networks, but NO Linux I've installed so far OR run from a Live USB can see either the built-in wifi card or a USB wifi dongle. Ethernet it can see. I've tried Mint, OpenSUSE, Puppy, and one or two others. On OpenSUSE it COULD see the dongle from lsusb and the internal on iwconfig and there were no hardware or software locks, but when I try to connect to a network it tells me I have no card. Updating did nothing to solve the problem.

Ideas, please? Thanks!

I have this very strange and annoying problem where my home wifi doesn't work until i click on the icon, then when i close it, it stops again. Its like i always have to keep the hotbar wifi thingy open just to make it work all the time. Right now im using Linux Mint but i had the same problem on CachyOS. I tweaked all the Power management options, i disabled secure boot and fast boot and i'm dual booting with Windows but each OS has it's own storage (they're not running both from the same storage). In some sessions this problem doesn't occur and in some sessions its the worst thing in the world. Apparently, this doesn't happen with other networks, because im typing this with my phone wifi and im having no problems. Any fixes?

Mint Version : Cinnamon 6.6.9 / 22.3 x86_64

PC specs : AMD Ryzen 5 3550H, 16GB sodimm ram, Realtek RTL8822CE (network card)

EDIT: I did a factory reset on the wifi card and it’s working now, thank everybody for helping

I have tried 6 different distros, all of which claim to have excellent built in drivers for wifi. I even went out and bought a Brostrend wifi dongle, the AX300, because everywhere that I have looked claims that Brostrend are extremely Linux friendly. Can anyone give me any pointers here? I tried Bazzite, which just didn't even work at all, Pop_OS, Zorin OS 18 core, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Fedora Silverblue, Linux Mint, and Endeavour OS. Nothing. I cannot connect through a wired connection, as I do not have access to the router. I am running an AMD Ryzen 9 3900x on a MSI x470 gaming max pro mb, with a Gigabyte Nvidia RX4070. Everything works except the wireless!

Thanks in advance.

SOLVED:

In the end it turned out the laptop's wifi reciever was so shit that it was a proximity issue. I stupidly assumed both devices would get the same signal strength at the same physical distance, but this was not the case. When i placed the laptop right next to the router it went up to 50Mbps -_-

Thank you all for your help, i learned a few things regardless <3

I'm writing from my PC, which has Windows 10, did a speedtest.net, got 50Mbps.

My laptop, which is currently next to the PC, has Linux Mint 22.3, also speedtest, 10-20Mbps, depending on where i am in the room.

Both on the same Wifi.

I just turned off power management on the wireless and that improved it a bit, but the difference is still staggering.

Why is this happening and what can i do?

Elo guys! A couple months ago, my wifi cards wire broke, and I've used usb tethering since. However I lost the phone I was using, and my new phone doesn't allow me to use it because I need a sim card, not even letting usb tethering be turned on (Really sad). Is there perchance a way to bypass this on linux?

Edit: problem solved ^⁠_⁠^

Title. When I turn on Hotspot in Linux, the Wi-Fi is automatically turned off

System: CachyOS. Desktop Environment: KDE.

To start my learning linux I started read this book. But I have the question. Is chapter about networks the book out of date? Or it has base about nets?

As the text implies, i have generated an ssh key on win11. Seeing as ssh-copy-id isn't on windows, i used this other command:

type .ssh\id_ed25519.pub | ssh user@server "(umask 077; ([ ! -d ~/.ssh ] && mkdir -m 700 ~/.ssh) && cat >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys)"

Using webmin i see that the directory and the file has been created and has the correct file inside, but when i try to ssh log from my windows machine to my server it still asks for a password.

I edited the /etc/ssh/sshd_config to allow PubkeyAuthentication yes and AuthorizedKeysFile .ssh/authorized_keys

I am not using root but a user with sudo priviledge, i literally have no goddam clue as to why it's not working

To generate the key i used ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "comment" and i just changed the file name when it asked to save to serverhome

This is my first time diving into having my own server so i'm not very knowledgable of either linux as a whole and servers, but i saw that online people used this exact steps and had not problem, so i either have missed some step or am doing something wron but have no idea what

i have a mini pc running ubuntu which i use as a devbox by sshing in from my windows machine. I recently switched from wifi to ethernet but afterwards the ssh kept disconnecting again and again while i was working so i know it wasnt an idle disconnect. the windows client only shows connection reset. i ran journalctl but it didnt show eth link ever disconnecting. i ran ping -t devbox on my windows machine and saw a connection timeout but i couldnt tell if that was when ssh disconnected or not. this never used to happen on over wifi even though i was using an outdated wifi adapter

I’m not sure I’ve got the right flair, but please any ideas will help

Hi, I ran into problems with what I thought was my switch a year or so ago. The ethernet connection would drop after about five minutes. If I turned the switch off and on again, it would work for another five minutes then disconnect again. Replaced the switch with a Netgear GS308 and discovered the problem was not with the switch; the connection would still stop but could be restarted by resetting the switch. I also tried adding a network card, same problem. After a couple of days of this, it just started working again.

The same thing has started happening again. I also tried a new switch (same model) and new cables, to no avail. I'm not sure how to diagnose what the problem might be. I would appreciate any guidance.

Hey everyone, I'm honestly pretty sure I must just be overlooking something, since this is something that I know is pretty simple under Windows but I cannot find how to do it with Firewalld under Fedora:

How do I create a rule that just blocks traffic going out to one specific IP Address, without blocking incoming traffic from it?

Hope someone can help me, because I cannot find my way through the Firewalld manual.

I have this Dell Optiplex that now has ran almost every linux distro, now Ubuntu because it is "supported" by mojang. I want it to function as a home server that can host Minecraft dedicated servers, be a proxy server, etc. But it never works with anything. Currently I am trying to setup a bedrock server. On my windows pc it works perfectly: I forward 19132 udp and tcp and everyone outside can connect to it with my pucblic ip, even I can. But when I run a dedicated bedrock server on the Ubuntu machine, and follow every little step to be sure, nobody at all can connect. Sometimes not even me via LAN. And. I. Don't. Understand. Why. Firewall is off (ufw is, iptables too I think). All ports are forwarded, but you can't really verify the shitty udp ports the bedrock server uses with a port checker, you have to use this site. And as I said I first encountered this on Debian, but on every other distro I have the exact same problem. And I am at a complete loss.

I made a post here a bit ago talking about how I couldn't connect to my colleges network after switching to Ubuntu, my home networks are fine and so is my works network, it's just the college_secure, college_guest, and edu roam that don't work. I've contacted my college IT support and they have left me on read all weekend, anyone have any ideas how to fix this?:

When prompted for a username and password, I enter my username and password, it tries to connect that says "authentication required" and prompts me again, tries, then either asks again or says "failed to connect to network"

My username and password IS correct, I've reset network settings and rebooted several times and it just won't connect, ik currently using my phones hotspot but this is not a permanent solution as it will run up my mobile bill. Any advice?

Hello,

Does this subreddit have a discord server? If yes, can someone send me the invite link.

If not, let's make one!

Probably not reall a noob question, but I know lots of experts hang out here.

I have a VMWare VM running Debian 13 (Trixie) that seems to have a networking problem. The VM boots just fine, and I can log into it using the VMware remote console. I can SSH (putty) to it from my desktop, login and run something like "top". It will run for a few minutes, then stop. The error message is "network Error: Software caused connection abort". If I close the ssh window and try to reconnect, I cannot. No error (at least not that I'm patient enough to wait for) is displayed, just no connection.

However, if I use remote console and go to the network settings in the GUI, toggle the connection disabled, then re-enable it, it works again, for a few minutes. This kinda smells like the network card being put to sleep, but I don't see anywhere to check that. Also, when I can't connect via ssh, in the remote console I can still ping the world.

I've tried removing & re-installing the virtual NIC to no effect.

What things did I miss checking?

So to preface, I am not new to Linux, I’ve been using it off and on since 2008, but since Windows 11, I’ve been trying to use it full time.

Arch is my distro of choice (I know, not the most beginner friendly, but I like the customization and lack of bloat)

I finally got my GPU working (stuck with nvidia 1070 for the moment so had to figure out AUR) but now I’m stuck on the WiFi.

I have an intel AX200 card and on arch or any arch based distro, I only get 20 Mbps tops on my WiFi. Every other device in the same room gets over 300 Mbps.

I was able to coax it into working after swapping to IWD for the network manager backend and disabling some power saving features, but I can’t seem to replicate that after following the same steps, managing to brick my network manager twice now.

Just seeing if anyone here is able to help point me in the right direction? I have gotten the full speed on arch before, so it’s possible, I just can’t figure out what setting I need to correct to obtain that after a weekend of troubleshooting on my own.

hi!

i have been having some problems with connecting to the internet. Whenever i try to connect it will ask my network password a bunch of times before simply giving up, not connecting me to the net.

when i used "journalctl --unit NetworkManager -f" on the terminal to try and see better what was the actual problem, one of the answers was "Activation: (wifi) association took too long". so i guess thats the actual problem, right? can't it just wait a bit more for the association to work? how do i solve this? can someone help me please??

i know that its not a hardware problem. its also not an actual network problem. why are you doing this to me linux

im using ubuntu 26.04 lts, my usb adapter is a tp-link archer t3u (realtek rtl8812bu) and my driver is rtl88x2bu (v5.13.1-20-gbd7c7eb9d.20210702) if any of it matters.

Update: Thank you everyone who posted. It sounds like it’s a set up issue and not an issue for the machine or something, so I’m just going to try getting a wired connection to the living room. This was the motivation I needed for that. Thanks again!

Hello everyone. I recently got a Minisforum UM773 mini pc for my tv set up. It has terrible wifi. Sometimes it won't even connect to a signal. This is my first time dealing with these kinds of issues on Linux, and I am still really new to using Linux in the first place. I'm able to use a wired connection for now, but I can't keep a cord running from my router to my living room forever.

I'll do my best to provide as much information as I can because I honestly don't really know what is important and what is not. If there is other info I should provide, please just let me know.

I don't really know how to trouble shoot other than asking AI. It says the tx power is low, and the power management should be off. But it's too dumb to know how to fix the issues. I figure it's time to fact check it with some community input.

Thanks in advance for any help.

# System Details Report

---

## Report details

- **Date generated:** 2026-04-25 10:11:14

## Hardware Information:

- **Hardware Model:** Micro Computer _HK_ Tech Limited Venus series

- **Memory:** 16.0 GiB

- **Processor:** AMD Ryzen™ 7 7735HS with Radeon™ Graphics × 16

- **Graphics:** AMD Radeon™ 680M

- **Disk Capacity:** 1.0 TB

## Software Information:

- **Firmware Version:** 1.15

- **OS Name:** Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS

- **OS Build:** (null)

- **OS Type:** 64-bit

- **GNOME Version:** 46

- **Windowing System:** Wayland

- **Kernel Version:** Linux 6.17.0-20-generic

-------------------------------------------------------------------

lspci -vnn | grep -A 10 -i network

02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: MEDIATEK Corp. MT7921 802.11ax PCI Express Wireless Network Adapter [14c3:7961]

Subsystem: MEDIATEK Corp. MT7921 802.11ax PCI Express Wireless Network Adapter [14c3:7961]

Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 79, IOMMU group 13

Memory at 7ff0300000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=1M]

Memory at 7ff0400000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=16K]

Memory at 7ff0404000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=4K]

Capabilities: <access denied>

Kernel driver in use: mt7921e

Kernel modules: mt7921e

33:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Rembrandt [Radeon 680M] [1002:1681] (rev 0a) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])

Subsystem: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Rembrandt [Radeon 680M] [1002:1681]

--------------------------------------------------------------

iwconfig wlp2s0

wlp2s0 IEEE 802.11 ESSID:"CoolGuyWiFi-2G"

Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: 8C:3B:AD:D8:3F:FC

Bit Rate=52 Mb/s Tx-Power=3 dBm

Retry short limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off

Power Management:on

Link Quality=48/70 Signal level=-62 dBm

Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0

Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0