Qualcomm NCM865 WiFi 7 card

[fhteagle]

Anyone have or use one of these yet? How's the kernel module and Linux support status?

MSI Herald-BE NCM865 WI-FI 7 (Wi-Fi 7, 802.11BE, Bluetooth 5.4, PCIe, Multi-Link Operation Technology, External Antenna) https://a.co/d/7pcGyb4

[bjlockie]

I think qualcomm is ok.
I don't know if they are as good as mediatek for pci but they seem to have developers participating in Linux.
It is not a USB device.

[morrownr]

Hi @fhteagle

Anyone have or use one of these yet?

No, I'm just watching the show.

How's the kernel module and Linux support status?

I monitor linux-wireless to keep up with what is going into the kernel. I'm pretty sure the ath12k driver would be the one for the card you are looking at. I don't keep up with Qualcomm (Atheros) and Intel as closely as Mediatek and Realtek because they don't supply USB chipsets but the ath12k driver has been in the kernel for a while. I wish we had specific info like we do for USB but we do not.

My thoughts: Unless you have an immediate need, you might be best served to wait as a lot of new cards and adapters that support WiFi 7 will be available in the coming 4-6 months. Remember also that quality can vary from maker to maker. We should see WiFi 7 cards from the big 4 (intel, Mediatek, Qualcomm and Realtek) on the market and getting reviews in the first half of this year and then WiFi 7 usb adapters Mediatek and Realtek being available maybe starting around mid-year. The in-kernel WiFi 7 drivers from the big 4 support PCIe cards and the Mediatek mt7925 driver additionally supports usb.

Keep us posted on what you find out.

@morrownr

[TylerSharpe11]

I think qualcomm has an SDK with a lot of tools for developers but you have to sign up on their site and get approved.

[Hylouis233]

NCM865 CANNOT support for Linux (Ubuntu 22.04)!

[morrownr]

Hi @Hylouis233

NCM865 CANNOT support for liunx (ubuntu 22.04)!!!

A good fundamental understanding of the Linux development model helps to understand how to integrate the latest technology into a working environment. The Linux development environment is fundamentally different from Windows. Windows is created by paid full time employees that are obligated to do what Microsoft tells them to do. Linux, on the other hand, has to have a development model that needs to take advantage of the resources that are available, when they are available. The Linux model is one of continuous work and releases. To accomodate this model, device driver support needs to be done in cooperation with various groups that support and guide driver development. In the case of wireless, we need to look at linux-wireless. This group includes many people involved in wireless development. Many are employees of the companies providing chips. Some are employees of companies that support wireless in various ways and some peoples are just people that are interested and want to learn. You can follow along by subscribing to the linux-wireless list. This list can appear chaotic at first but there is a method to the madness. Between following this list and monitoring a few other locations, I am able to form opinions on many things regarding wireless and Linux.

Right now, my opinion is that if a user wants WiFi 7 capability in a full spectrum manner like all modes supported... such as managed, AP, monitor, P2P then the best option is cards based on the mt7925 chip by Mediatek. In fact, I bought a little M.2 card with the mt7925 chip a while back and am impressed with its wifi capability. There were no surprises. I knew that Mediatek merged support for this chip in kernel 6.7. I installed he chip and then installed Ubuntu 24.04 which uses kernel 6.8. WiFi can to life. Bluetooth did not come to life but I don't use it much right now anyway but I was able to quickly determine that a new vid-pid needed to be added and someone beat me to it so the support will show up in kernel 6.12.

Given that mt7925 support showed up in kernel 6.7, we know that any kernel before than may not have support for the chip. In this case, there is an exception for OpenWRT. The driver was backported to OpenWRT 2023-05 which uses kernel 5.15. This happens because OpenWRT has a heavy presence of Mediatek devs working on OpenWRT. In the mission statement for this site, I list Educational Information as one of the goals of this site. Understanding how things work and who is doing what can make Linux users lives a lot easier when it comes to wifi.

While Qualcomm and Intel are big players in the wireless sector, they do not provide USB chips so I do not pay that much attention to them as the topic of this site is USB WiFi. I do pick up on a lot of things but I do not remember when Qualcomm added support for their WiFi 7 chip. One would need to know when that support was added so as to run a kernel that has the support.

Hope this helps.

[bjlockie]

Qualcomm added support for their WiFi 7 chip.

Do they develop the athx drivers or are they community efforts?

[jaearr]

There are a few ath10k devices (which is WiFi 5?) that have been worked on in the kernel but the one I have, a Linksys WUSB6100M, remains nonfunctional. USB devices (and SDIO devices) are significantly slower than PCIe devices; the binary blob appears to behave differently resulting in the adapter to stop functioning. The earliest relevant post was From 2017 and the most recent was in 2023. It's best to only go with what already works and not presume that functionality will eventually happen, even with companies that do a good job supporting other interfaces. So the answer to your question is yes, Qualcomm developers support some devices and the community support other devices in the same family but what actually works has to be tested.

[morrownr]

Do they develop the athx drivers or are they community efforts?

Qualcomm has a gatekeeper, as I call them, and it is Qualcomm employees that do most of the work. This is similar to what intel and Mediatek do and is supposed to be the norm. Anyone can submit a patch. Many community members do submit patches and many of those patches are accepted. Realtek does this with their rtw88 and rtw89 series of wifi drivers but they only do it for the non-usb drivers. The work that has gone into adding usb support and additional drivers to rtw88 is almost exclusively community work. Why Realtek's USB wifi support is crap is only known to Realtek's management as far as I can tell. The only company that sells usb wifi chips that does driver development the way it is supposed to be done is Mediatek.