Answers

Q Confused network card

I’ve been using Linux Mint Cinnamon flavour for many years. I recently decided to update from version 18.3 to the latest 20.x version. I went through the procedure of going from 18.x to 19.0, then to 19.3 finally to 20.0 ensuring that I had backups and snapshots readily available.

The update to version 20 failed abysmally, with no network connection and to make matters worse, substantial loss of data. I reverted to 19.3 but still had problems. The cause was eventually traced to the kernel in use as follows:

Linux kernel 5.0.0-32-generic amd64 (End of Life) Everything works OK, network connects.

Linux kernel 5.3.0-70-generic amd64 (End of Life) Everything works OK, network connects but shows battery symbol, “Using battery power"!

Linux kernel 5.4.x-xx-generic amd64 (all versions) Apps work as long as no network/internet required as no network connection, shows battery symbol as above.

I’m now using the 5.3.70 kernel despite the battery symbol. Is this a known problem? My network adaptor looks pretty standard to me. And why the battery symbol – this is a desktop mains powered PC? Or is the battery referred to the one in the keyboard/mouse, in which case there should be two!

John Oliver

A This is probably a driver conflict.

There are two separate drivers for this network chipset: r8168 and r8169. The r8168