Intel AX210 and Linux

I bought a mini pc and upgraded its WiFi card with a newly released chipset AX210. It was working fine with Windows but after I installed my ArchLinux I noticed that WiFi was not working.

It was wierd because WiFi was working during installation. So I had to spend sometime to figure out the problem.

I learned that AX210 got support with the kernel version 5.11. Still it didn’t mean anything for me because my first attempt was already using 5.11 version of kernel. I didn’t try using bluetooth during installation but WiFi was working. But after installation both of them was not working. I was not even capable of enabling bluetooth and WiFi was not even available in menu. I questioned myself if bluez and alsa packages were properly installed. After I checked all, I couldn’t find anything missing.

I started digging ArchForum. I learned that with the March version of kernel-firmware package there was a bug and WiFi was not working because of that. I tried immediately to downgrade to February version and got a success…

But I couln’t manage to have bluetooth working. I was not sure if I have a problem with my installation. I decided to give it a try with Tumbleweed which is also a rolling distribution like Arch.

Result was same bluetooth didn’t work. Mean time 5.12 became available I started using 5.12 kernel since release candidate 8. In addition to kernel package, kernel-firmware package got its April update too. I have now everything working flawlessly. I wanted to share my experience with you guys if I can be helpful with your Linux experience.

Stay opensource avoid Vendor Lock-in