Fix Wifi Speed with Debian
First off, may I say this is dumb. This has been an issue for at least 4 years in the Linux community and still, to this day, the solution is to fix it manually.
To start, my install uses NetworkManager which has a rudimentary GUI, and since this has been a thing for at least 4 years, you would think it would be an option in said GUI, but as of this writing I didn't see it.
The problem
The card in this system is a m.2 AMD RZ616 Wi-Fi 6E in a 13" AMD Framework laptop. Last night when I was trying to look at some pictures I took I got fed up with the network speeds. I first thought it was a network issue, but no, my phone and computer were getting over 200Mbps on the wifi, the laptop, well it was getting 2Mbps.
I took over an hour to figure it out last night while watching the ball game (Blue Jays lost) and gave up. This morning I took a little more time and couldn't really figure out what I needed to do, and I even started looking for cards that may work "nicer" with my install. I used to have Windows on this machine and it would work swimmingly.
Now this is starting to get like a padded recipe, with the life story at the beginning, so I will jump to the solution.
The Solution
To fix this issue we need to turn off powersave. Figuring out exactly what the setting for this was took some poking around in the internet because the man pages don't give you any options.
My solution:
Create a file called turnoff-powersave.conf here \etc\NetworkManager\conf.d. It needs to be created with sudo permissions.
sudo vim \etc\NetworkManager\conf.d\turnoff-powersave.conf
Add:
[connection]
wifi.powersave = 2
Then just restart Network Manager
sudo systemctl restart NetworkManager
Why Linux Sucks
It is a travesty that even the options for wifi.powersave aren't included anywhere in the official documentation for NetworkManager. The only link I could find is to a random git page as "unoffical settings" NetworkManager WiFi Power Saving.
Even a computer savvy person isn't going to be able to RTFM to fix this. I had to waste a couple hours searching around, and then another 20min writing this so that I remember that I have to add this fucking file to my next linux install.
I shouldn't have a "special" bash script to set up a new laptop (new as in to me, not cutting edge) to use a stable Linux distro. This has been an issue for over 4 years, so why is it still the default to have powersave enabled. It doesn't work!
That's enough ranting. I just want to STOP using Windows and I won't go to Apple, so I suffer with Linux.