Thursday, August 8, 2024

Linux Mint unable to connect to 2.4GHz wireless, but no problem connecting to 5GHz wireless

I have this issue whereby a laptop of mine, which is running Linux Mint 21.2, was unable to connect to my 2.4GHz wife connection. I have no issue connecting to the 5GHz connection, only 2.4Ghz is having issue. I turned to linux mint forum, and found this post, which explained the issue, and the solution was to change my backend wifi device from wpa-supplicant to iwd. It seems that the current wifi daemon at that time, which was wpasupplicant was having issue connecting to 2.4GHz wifi connection. 

Here are the steps:

1. Install iwd

sudo apt update && sudo apt install iwd -y


2. Create a configuration file in /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/wifi-backend.conf 

sudo nano /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/wifi-backend.conf 


3. Add in below setting

[device]

wifi.backend=iwd


4. Save and exit nano by pressing ctrl-o and then ctrl-x


5. Stop and disable wpa_supplicant daemon

sudo systemctl disable --now wpa_supplicant


6. Start and enable iwd

sudo systemctl enable --now iwd


7. Restart NetworkManager daemon

sudo systemctl restart NetworkManager


And you are good  to go. You should now be able to connect to the 2.4GHz wireless, without any issue.