Advice for new laptop with latest hardware & NixOS kernel

Hello everyone,

I’m about to buy a Clevo N141CU Comet Lake for my father, and I can use a M.2 Wifi Intel AC-9260 or a M.2 Wifi Intel AX200. The AX200 is a nice upgrade, but it requires at least a 5.3 kernel.

This brought a few questions to my mind:

  • do you generally use default kernels or try to use the latest stable for security/hardware’s sake?
  • should I anticipate troubles switching to a more recent kernel?
  • finally, regarding the two previous questions, is it worth the hassle, or should I stick to an AC-9260?

Thanks for reading and all the best,
Thomas

1 Like

I personally use the latest stable kernel available for hardware reasons (recently bumped to version 5.4). I didn’t had any issue while using it. I had more issues by using older kernel on my laptop.

Here is what I use in my /etc/nixos/configuration.nix setup :

kernelPackages = pkgs.linuxPackages_latest;

Not that I’m aware of. I’ve always lived on the bleeding edge (linux-mainline) when I was using another dsitribution, and on Nix I’m using the latest stable. Never had an any issue yet.

It is yours to see if you’re up to take risks for the sake of more WiFi performance :slight_smile:.

@Elyhaka Thanks a lot for your answer! I’ve upgraded to kernel 5.3.13 on my laptop and everything seems nice. I’m allowing myself another night of sleep, and I’ll see whether I’ll be a crazy adventurer with amazing WiFi, or a more reasonable one :wink:!