Unfortunately, it’s a pretty common issue (it seems) for Qualcomm Atheros devices on laptops not working properly under Linux Mint / Ubuntu (and potentially others but this fix is specific for said OSs).
The cause for this issue is power management for Qualcomm Atheros devices. I’m assuming this doesn’t happen for every Qualcomm Atheros device… ever, but I’ve certainly seen it happen on Laptops for the last year or two now (even Kernel 5 doesn’t seem to fix this).
Fortunately, it’s a very simple fix once you know this. Unfortunately, if you don’t know this it’s a bit of rabbit hole of all sorts of tests, diagnostics, sanity checks, etc that can be done with all sorts of Wifi related issues. But since you’re here, hopefully this will solve the issue for you.
Disclosure: If this has just started happening to you on your Qualcomm Atheros device, this will not be the fix for your issue as this issue happens from the word go, it’s not something that works fine for a month and then starts being an issue.
- First, edit the default-wifi-powersave-on.conf file
sudo nano /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/default-wifi-powersave-on.conf
- The file’s second line should indicate: “wifi.powersave = 3“. Change it to 2 and reboot.
- Once back up, make sure the power management for the wireless device is indeed off by running the following command.
iwconfig
Within the information shown, one line should now read “Power Management:off“. If so, the issue should now be hopefully resolved for you.
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