Last week, I bought an Acer Laptop which had Linpus Linux installed in it. The reason why I went for acer instead of HP was that I intend to use Linux Mint as my primary operating systems and HP systems are notorious when it comes to Linux and wifi drivers.

But, in my new laptop, I have installed Linux Mint 17.3 and I was shocked to see that the WiFi is not working. I was really frustrated. But, fortunately, later that day I found out that the WiFi card used in the Laptop is a fairly new one and Linux distros does not have the driver in the official installation ( or the repos, for that matter ). And I was able to fix the Wifi issue very easily

My Laptop : Acer Aspire E15 (E5-573G-3100)

Note : This should work for any laptop with Qualcomm Atheros Device 0042

This is how I fixed the WiFi issue in my Laptop Link to heading

Update : The WiFi issues are fixed in later versions of Linux Kernel. So, I’d suggest you to use a later version of Linux Distro Like Ubuntu 16.04, Linux Mint 18 or even the latest version of Kali Linux and you shouldn’t face any WiFi issue

Identify your WiFi device. Open a terminal and issue Link to heading
lspci  | grep Network
# It should display the name of your WiFi card
# If the output is similar to the one below, you are in luck, we can fix this easily
mansoor ~ $ lspci  | grep Network

Once you have made sure that the Network device is the one above, follow the below steps to install the driver for WiFi

Install git and tools to compile the driver Link to heading
sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r) git
Issue the following commands one by one. Anything written after “#” is a comment and you don’t have to execute it. Link to heading

It’s just there to help you understand what’s going on

# Modify the config files
echo "options ath10k_core skip_otp=y" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/ath10k_core.conf

# Download the backport
wget https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/projects/backports/2015/11/20/backports-20151120.tar.gz

# Extract it
tar zxvf backports-20151120.tar.gz

# cd to the directory, compile and install it. The commands 'make' and 'make install' will take some time to finish
cd backports-20151120
make defconfig-wifi
make
sudo make install

# Download the firmware for the WiFi card
git clone https://github.com/kvalo/ath10k-firmware.git

# Copy the firmware to appropriate locations. 
sudo cp -r ath10k-firmware/QCA9377 /lib/firmware/ath10k/
sudo cp /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA9377/hw1.0/firmware-5.bin_WLAN.TF.1.0-00267-1 /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA9377/hw1.0/firmware-5.bin
Reboot your machine. That’s it. Your wifi should work now until you do a kernel update. Link to heading

What to do after a Kernel update Link to heading

If you update your kernel after the above patch, you will have to recompile and re-install it. Follow the below steps in case you update your kernel and WiFi stopped working

cd backports-20151120
make clean
make defconfig-wifi
make
sudo make install

Alright. You’re all set. I was able to make the WiFi work without having to sweat much. Pheww.. 😀