Does wifi chipset matter on a laptop? Its just an m.2 Key E chip, should be easily replaceable. Cant imagine manufacturers would solder that on, its not like RAM
Yes it matters. Loads of manufacturers are doing soldered wifi on some of their models. Delll, HP, they are all at it.
And even if your wifi wasn’t soldered, wouldn’t it be better to know you were buying a machine where it would just work out the box rather than needing replacement?
Never been reliant on wifi tbh, I’ve generally been an Ethernet purist and have never owned a personal laptop (just desktops). Even for work laptops id use either onboard ethernet or a dongle
Yeah, my keyboard just straight up didn’t work when I got my laptop; thankfully the issue was already fixed in a newer kernel so I just had to update (using a USB keyboard, lol).
There plenty of other things to consider too, though, especially for laptops.
WiFi chipset, trackpad hardware, webcam, all can lead to a sad time with the wrong manufacturers and driver support
Modern devices are pretty generic. You can install Linux on just about anything.
Web cams tend to be USB devices and trackpads are often SPI. WiFi can be an issue but only with a handful of devices.
Yep, I never had a serious problem with any laptop from the last ~20 years (but I do usually use older hardware, my main laptop is from ~2018)
Honestly 2018 is fairly modern from a Linux perspective. I’ve seen people using hardware from 2005.
I think anything newer than 2014 is pretty good for Linux. Things made in the last 7 years are even better.
Well, the drivers have matured since then. And my latitude 5290 is a buisness laptop, so they usually don’t screw consumers as much.
Does wifi chipset matter on a laptop? Its just an m.2 Key E chip, should be easily replaceable. Cant imagine manufacturers would solder that on, its not like RAM
Yes it matters. Loads of manufacturers are doing soldered wifi on some of their models. Delll, HP, they are all at it.
And even if your wifi wasn’t soldered, wouldn’t it be better to know you were buying a machine where it would just work out the box rather than needing replacement?
Oof, yeah, thats awful.
Never been reliant on wifi tbh, I’ve generally been an Ethernet purist and have never owned a personal laptop (just desktops). Even for work laptops id use either onboard ethernet or a dongle
Yeah, my keyboard just straight up didn’t work when I got my laptop; thankfully the issue was already fixed in a newer kernel so I just had to update (using a USB keyboard, lol).