Lenovo T560 WWan / network card

[willingHorse]

Hi All,

I have successfully install Debian Jessie on a few different older laptop. Learned a lot a long the way. The "Googles" have been of great assistance with every issues encountered to date.
up until now anyway.

I have a new Laptop, specially purchased to be used with Debian. lenovo t560.

During the installation I encountered a message telling me that the WWAN could not be install.
I had no other option but to carry on the install, thinking one could install the network card later.
upon first boot up it was clear that there was absolutely no network hardware install. (wireless or Lan)

all the info and help found explain how to install and potentially fix my issue but require me to download non free driver. all good if I could use the terminal to access the internet.

If someone as a place for me to star looking in to this it wold be most appreciated.

[phenest]

Could you please remove the blue colouring on the text of your post and use plain black instead. I'm finding it difficult to read.

Please post the results of:

Code: Select all

lspci -k

[stevepusser]

The Googles say that laptop has Intel Skylake hardware, so the 2014-vintage regular Jessie is going to have poor support for it.

If you don't have any way to get on the Net except WWAN--no possible wifi or wired connection--then it will potentially be difficult to manually upgrade the kernel and other packages needed to get it working well in Jessie. In your case, I would recommend a Stretch ISO with included non-free firmware--maybe test a live version of that to see if it just works with the hardware out of the box. The Live versions include the installer, you just can't install from a Live Session. They also may not support UEFI, which you no doubt have...but they are useful for testing on your hardware:

https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unof ... so-hybrid/

There are also some Debian derivatives that include a newer kernel and firmware as standard, such as 64-bit MX Linux 16...but then you aren't really running true Debian any longer.

[willingHorse]

I was somewhat afraid to hear that.

In the mean time I guess one could grab a cheap usb WIFI stick.

Does anyone have experience with usb stick as network card?

[Segfault]

Output of lspci -nnk, please (as requested before), it is likely you have Intel wireless and to make it work firmware is required.

[stevepusser]

Cross your fingers and hope you got the Intel 8260 and not the Broadcom 4356, they seem to work better once you have a newer kernel and firmware:

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WLAN Bluetooth
™
One of the following, configurable by model:
•  11ac+BT, Broadcom BCM4356
•  11ac+BT, Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 8260

Bluetooth 4.1 wireless, integrated in 
Wi-Fi + Bluetooth combo adapter

http://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF ... ations.pdf

The Jessie kernel has no support (driver) for the 8260, regardless of what firmware is installed.

Hmmm, the Broadcom 4356 has support in a kernel driver, but again, not in Jessie's, and again it also will need some firmware.

Just about every USB wifi adapter you can find will need non-free firmware, too. Grin and bear it. And knowing exactly what's in a device without plugging it in is very difficult. The manufacturers often don't have documentation to tell you so, and have been known to change the internals of a device in midstream without any indication on the outside. The best thing is to read questions, comments, etc. on Amazon or Newegg and see if you can find anything about Linux, unless you can find a local store that would let you test the thing. But be aware even if it's supported by Jessie's kernel, it will still need appropriate firmware.


I also roll a backport of the Liquorix kernel which is a single deb file and should install in your machine--it too would require firmware from jessie-backports. Those can be downloaded as debs on any Net-connected machine and then walked over to your laptop. Once you get a connection with that kernel, you could install and switch over to the Debian backports kernel--I think that one requires several more deb files and is more difficult to install, though it can be done.

[willingHorse]

Thank you for your guidance ad assistance.
Since Debian -8- does not support my network card and does not look like it will anytime soon,I decided to loaded a copy of Debian -9- (it is early in the game to do so but I don't really have a choice if i want to run DEBIAN)
My network card is working (after having to install a few non-free files- iwlwifi-8000c 19/20/21/22/23/24...still missing 25/26)
I will play around with it and see if I can install my virtual machine next....

Once again thank you for your help.