Most laptops do not have soldered in wifi cards. They are usually removable cards.
Checking the specs and the service manual for the X1 indicates it may have a removable wifi, and the user manual for the T16 shows how to remove & replace the wifi card.
If one is permanently installed and the other removable I would be somewhat surprised.
and those entries continue for each firmware version attempted before total failure.
While I do not know what firmware versions or driver versions you have on the T16, you did say updates and I see this on my system which was last updated today.
You may use those commands to see the differences in the two systems and know that as a result of the updates you are seeing the changes.
Tracking down the actual time it happened and change that caused it is a matter of following the bouncing ball down the trail.
Note that I assume the wifi on the T16 worked in the past and now no longer does.
Modinfo on the X1 shows depends: cfg80211,iwlmei while on the T16 it shows depends: cfg80211
This document mentions “Intel® Wi-Fi 6E AX211 (Gig+) Module 2nd Generation Wi-Fi 6 with extended Wi-Fi 6E (6GHz band) support”, but I don’t see any mention of older models.
What is the exact sequence of events that led to this failure?
In other words,
Did the wifi work at some point then you did an update and it failed?
Has it never worked? When did it fail? What else may have been done at time of failure?
If an update was done then it failed you may be able to use dnf history to find out what was actually updated at that time (but only if you do updates with dnf). If you use gnome software to perform updates I have no clue how to see the history of those.
Once you have identified the time at which it failed and what happened at that time then it is relatively easy to pinpoint the change that caused it.
On the other hand, if it has never worked then I presently have no clue.
Will dig deeper into the content of the the ISO to see why it would work on one system (X1) but not on the other (T16).
BTW, you listed the firmware for the T16 (updated) but not for the X1 (Live). I know there is a major difference but would like it documented here for reference. The firmware on the T16 matches mine, but I have no matching intel adapter for testing.
You are saying the wifi has never worked on the T16?
If that is the case and the manual says it can be replaced by the user then it seems the fix may be to replace the card on that system. The manual also suggests to use only lenovo parts.
I have an Intel AX201 in a Dell Precision 5560. The card uses the same iwlwifi driver but different firmware. The wireless worked flawlessly under windows 11 and with Linux kernel versions 5.15 ~ 5.17. If I upgrade kernels it stops working with the same errors Alberto is getting. At the moment I keep an older 5.17 kernel that works and boot into that. If I boot the latest version installed or try a live USB with a newer kernel it does not work, same CSR_RESET errors. Replacing perfectly good hardware because of a software bug is not a good solution. I suspect a change in the Intel driver, firmware, or Linux kernel is the issue. If I have time later I’ll experiment more with mine.
Dec 01 18:10:49 manjaro-gnome kernel: Intel(R) Wireless WiFi driver for Linux
Dec 01 18:10:49 manjaro-gnome kernel: iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3: enabling device (0000 -> 0002)
Dec 01 18:10:49 manjaro-gnome kernel: iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-so-a0-gf-a0-66.ucode failed with error -2
Dec 01 18:10:49 manjaro-gnome kernel: iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-so-a0-gf-a0-65.ucode failed with error -2
Dec 01 18:10:49 manjaro-gnome kernel: iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3: api flags index 2 larger than supported by driver
Dec 01 18:10:49 manjaro-gnome kernel: iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3: TLV_FW_FSEQ_VERSION: FSEQ Version: 0.0.2.25
Dec 01 18:10:49 manjaro-gnome kernel: iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3: loaded firmware version 64.97bbee0a.0 so-a0-gf-a0-64.ucode op_mode iwlmvm
That firmware version loaded is the oldest in the current linux-firmware package.
My guess–> the chipset is enough different and the driver is enough different that the system is unable to load the proper firmware and thus cannot function, even though the device is seen by lspci. Maybe if you were able to put the driver from manjaro onto the fedora system it might work.
The Manjaro live usb is running Linux Kernel V 5.15. It is within the Linux kernel range, 5.15 ~ 5.17, I have seen work regardless of distro. If you installed and updated to a newer version of the kernel I suspect the wifi would stop working.
We are stuck with the firmware Intel provides, but Intel wifi hardware is
affordable and many models do work well with linux. Once a device has
been sold, you can’t expect vendors to put much effort into support for newer OS’s as that just reduces sales of newer models. It does, however, increase the supply of devices in the market. It needs a couple years for linux to gain robust support for new hardware, so I generally shop for gear that has been on the market for around two years and works for many
users.
Whether the hardware is good depends on your “use case”. Support for older hardware may be dropped because some capabilities, e.g., bluetooth or power management don’t work properly. Businesses are moving to wifi 6 (IEEE 802.11ax), so are replacing wifi 5 (IEEE 802.11ac) hardware. Intel clearly sells a bunch of cards called “AX211” that differ in the 4th PCI ID field, as can be seen on the Linux Hardware database – only a fraction of them are labelled as “6”.
This probably is unrelated but, on my T14, my wifi did not work when the uefi bios was set to linux S3 for suspend. After a bios update that setting appears to have been removed, so I’m not sure if you’ll have it.
ISTR there have been cases where having the wifi disabled in windows put the adapter in blocked mode when checking it with rfkill and it could not be enabled in linux.
What is the output of rfkill on your system? Is the wifi either soft or hard blocked?
For some it seemed the fix was to enable wifi in windows prior to shutdown then the adapter was usable in linux.