Fedora KDE 43 Ethernet Connection Not Working

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1

I’ve installed Fedora KDE 43 yesterday. It is not a dual-boot. The Wi-Fi connections work fine, but the Ethernet doesn’t seem to connect properly. The same cable works fine in other devices. I can’t see the wired connection in the Networks tab.

When I run the command nmcli, I get the following message:

lo: connected (externally) to lo
        "lo"
        loopback (unknown), 00:00:00:00:00:00, sw, mtu 65536
        inet4 127.0.0.1/8
        inet6 ::1/128

eno1: disconnected
        "Realtek RTL8111/8168/8211/8411"
        ethernet (r8169), 8C:8C:AA:EC:5B:6C, hw, mtu 1500

wlp4s0: unavailable
        "Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174"
        wifi (ath10k_pci), 7E:69:10:FE:DE:FB, sw disabled, hw, mtu 1500

p2p-dev-wlp4s0: unavailable
        "p2p-dev-wlp4s0"
        wifi-p2p, sw disabled, hw

DNS configuration:
        servers: dns+tls://9.9.9.9#dns.quad9.net

I can provide more info if needed.

2

Disconnected normally means the device is active but has no connection to the network.

Did the ethernet port work with whatever OS may have been installed before you installed fedora?
Have you tried a different cable?
Have you tried a different port on the router?

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3

It came with Windows 10, I installed Pop!_OS 24.02 before and it worked with both.

I tried three different cables, none of them worked out.

How can I do that effectively?

4

I don’t know your hardware config. Some home routers/APs have multiple ethernet ports (effectively a switch and router combined) and some have only one. Some users have an ethernet switch between the router and their network.

I was just thinking of the various pieces in the chain between your PC and the router.

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5

This adapter was mentioned in https://lkml.org/lkml/2026/1/9/1727

(“Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8211/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 15)”)
with PHY ID 0x001cc800 (“Generic FE-GE Realtek PHY”), works all fine
with this series applied.

not sure what “this series” is, but
LHDB finds multiple versions of this model. Some do have working in-kernel drivers. You need to get the full set of 4 vendor:device:subvendor:subdevice ID’s to check if your hardware works for others. To get the ID’s run sudo lspci -nnvmm | grep -EA 6 -B 1 -i 'ethernet'. This should have lines like

Vendor:<text> [ID]
Device:	<text> [ID]
SVendor: <text> [ID]
SDevice: <text> [ID]
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6

I understand. I’m using a laptop with a single port, and a router with four ports. Switching to different ports didn’t worked though.

7

The command returned this:

Slot:   03:00.0
Class:  Ethernet controller [0200]
Vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. [10ec]
Device: RTL8111/8168/8211/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller [8168]
SVendor:        Lenovo [17aa]
SDevice:        Device [38f7]
Rev:    10
ProgIf: 00
IOMMUGroup:     11
8

which gets you to https://linux-hardware.org/?id=pci:10ec-8168-17aa-38f7. That says the r8169 driver module should support your ethernet hardware, so may be related to the r8169 changes (mentioned in lkml post from Jan. 9th above). The changes may not have been applied, or have inadvertently created a new bug or conflicts with Lenovo’s “special sauce” to address the underlying problem. Transient problems with network and sound drivers are not unusual, so I find it necessary to have USB dongles I can use while waiting for the issue to be resolved.

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9

Would reinstalling Fedora be a smart decision?

10

If ethernet doesn’t work in the Live Installer you would not gain anything from a reinstall.

If ethernet does work using the Live USB installer, that points to an issue with recent changes to the driver and or kernel. A reinstall should not be needed as you can choose to install older kernels which will include an older r8169 module, but there have been other bugs with the early F43 kernels, so you will risk introducing an already solved problem. My experience has been that USB ethernet adapters are a cheap and robust temporary solution to similar problems (and good insurance in case problems occur with new kernels in the future).

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