I’m usually in the habit of keeping my Linux desktop up to date. Normally, it’s pretty uneventful to run the Ubuntu updater or do it on the command line.
However, today something interesting happened. I ran the update, noted that there was a kernel update from 6.2.0-34 to 6.2.0-36 and let it run. The fun started when I rebooted my computer.
On reboot, the WiFi network was gone. I’m using a pretty crappy USB network adapter that required some special drivers and apparently the update borked the driver.
I have a weird problem that the keyboard isn’t recognized on reboot until Linux is running (might be something to do with the ports I’ve got my keyboard plugged into). This means I can’t select options in GRUB so to be able to switch the book kernel I had to do some research in /boot/grub/grub.cfg to update /etc/default/grub so that the default was “1>2” which went to the third entry of the advanced boot menu. Fun.
That got me back to kernel 6.2.0-34 where I could go and get the latest version of the driver and proceeded to follow the instructions on upgrading it. I then had a weird thought that maybe the driver was now in the kernel. So, I uninstalled the driver and switched grub back to boot into 6.2.0-36 and it worked.
On doing a little bit of research on the kernel merge widow for that release, I found that Realtek 8822BU is now supported. I’m glad I don’t have the special driver, but the process of getting there wasn’t smooth.