WIFI stops after a few minutes on desktop computer

I have a triple boot desktop with Ubuntu, Mint and Win10. Ubuntu and Win 10 have no WIFI problems. Mint 20.3 looses WIFI after a few minutes even though it shows in the network as having 4 bars. I have up dated and upgraded the system software, but no luck. I am using a ASUS N13 dongle and have four bars with Ubuntu and Win 10.

Any ideas as to what I should do?

Are there any commands that I can run in Terminal?

Since this seems to be a Mint specific issue, I think you will have better luck asking over on the Linix Mint forums.

There are some threads that may contain useful information to solve this issue:
ASUS USB wifi adapter issue.

We can handle this question here, and even if we can’t we can all figure it out together. :slight_smile:

On this issue, my theory, based on what I’ve experienced, is that Mint is using an older kernel and/or older driver packages. With Linux, hardware compatibility is tied to how new the distro/kernel is. If one has an older component than the others, you run into this exact situation.

I hate to ask this, but have you considered a different WiFi dongle, one that Linux has built-in support for? One example is Think Penguin, they sell one for around $50 IIRC. And I know that’s not cheap, but I would think your time and sanity has value too. After getting these to work, they can often break again and require manual intervention to keep them working.

That said, you can probably fix this by setting up Mint to use a newer kernel to see if that helps. If it doesn’t help, you can always switch it back. There should be a kernel manager in the applications menu.

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Of course, didn’t mean to dismiss it. I just thought that maybe more people using that particular distribution would be able to provide better feedback (Mint forums have been great for that in my experience). Unfortunately, I didn’t even know where to start troubleshooting it… I’ll watch carefully and learn :+1:

No offense at all! It’s hard to tell tone from text. It’s all good. I just want to steer the community toward learning, and eventually I think it will be awesome to have a lab of my own (separate from the studio) that I can use to reproduce issues that people experience and try and help. But I think with all of our brains put together, there’s nothing we can’t solve :slight_smile:

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The problem was the usb ports have not been unplugged in a few years on my desktop computer. By unplugging them and replugging them in again everything is working. I never would have thought that was the problem. Thank all of you for your help.

Do you use a docking station or USB switcher by chance? This behavior is more common for me when I use those.

No I don’t use either