I have two laptops, both of which are believed to contain a Intel Wireless-AC 9260 2x2 802.11ac + BT5.0 (vPro) WiFi card.
On one laptop, running Ubuntu 22.04, the OS identifies the card as a Wireless interface with wireless capabilities.
$ sudo lshw -C network
*-network
description: Wireless interface
product: Wireless-AC 9260
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:3b:00.0
logical name: wlp59s0
version: 29
serial: d4:3b:04:cb:24:92
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlwifi driverversion=6.5.0-45-generic firmware=46.fae53a8b.0 9260-th-b0-jf-b0- ip=192.168.2.9 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11
resources: irq:16 memory:ed400000-ed403fff
$ sudo lspci -nn
3b:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation Wireless-AC 9260 [8086:2526] (rev 29)
On the other laptop, running Ubuntu 24.04, the OS identifies the card as an Ethernet interface with no wireless capability. Despite this, the WiFi somehow works on the second laptop, albeit with severely degraded performance.
$ sudo lshw -C network
[sudo] password for ubuntu:
*-network
description: Ethernet interface
product: Wi-Fi 5(802.11ac) Wireless-AC 9x6x [Thunder Peak]
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:3b:00.0
logical name: wlp59s0
version: 29
serial: 2c:db:07:b9:ab:b8
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix bus_master cap_list ethernet physical
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlwifi driverversion=6.8.0-39-generic firmware=46.7e3e4b69.0 9260-th-b0-jf-b0- ip=192.168.2.12 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes
resources: irq:174 memory:ed400000-ed403fff
$ sudo lspci -nn
3b:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation Wi-Fi 5(802.11ac) Wireless-AC 9x6x [Thunder Peak] [8086:2526] (rev 29)
What does it mean if the second card lacks a wireless entry under capabilities:?
If it is meaningful, why does the WiFi continue to work anyways on the second machine?
Is the lack of wireless capability in the second description responsible for degraded WiFi performance on the second machine?
If so, how do I get the OS to identify the card as a WiFi card?
