All Linux Things

My Dell E6420s use either the Intel Centrino or Broadcom wifi cards but only the Intel card is seen easily by all distros. Most distros dont see the Broadcom card and you have to install drivers manually assuming that goes well. I find it interesting given how common Broadcom is in a variety of hardware.
Im going to swap the Broadcom out and install an Intel Centrino wifi card.

Broadcom's wl driver (also known as broadcom-sta) isn't open source, that's why. So any distro that focuses on libre will never support newer Broadcom that uses that out of the box. And many others "support" it, but require you to agree to broadcom's terms and conditions of their proprietary driver installer. Also, the hardware just sucks IMO, even when it is suported.

I was trying Elementary 5.0 tonite and it spotted the Brtadcom wifi right away so go figure but KDE Neon couldnt see it.
I prefer Intel myself as Ive had few issues and always recognized.

The Qualcomm Atheros so far seems to be seen just fine even though I was suppose to get an Intel Centrino wifi card instead. Quite the difference from the Broadcom card.

As far as AC + BT 4.2 cards, I actually like my Atheros more than the Intel. Seems to work from a bit further away than the Intel (not a huge difference, but a difference). Atheros doesn't have a AC + BT 5.0 card yet though, so I have been buying Intel recently.

Im using older hardware and a wider variety of distros and consistently the Intels are the better choice.