Canonical recently posted a thread on their official forum looking for testers to see whether iwd can replace wpa_supplicant for wireless network management. iwd is Intel’s kernel-based wireless network management. It comes with a bunch of advantages, mostly around performance and speed — which figures, since it lives at the kernel level. Per Canonical’s post, we can join the testing and see how it goes:

Recently I messed around with the GPD Win. Bought it to play games, but somehow everything I actually play on it is pixel art. First off, Taobao has skins for the GPD Win now — only one seller, though. My initial thought was that it should fix the GPD Win’s ugly-as-hell looks. Except this skin is a “beta version,” just like the seller said.

A while back I swapped the WiFi module in my ThinkPad X250 for one without an FRU. Recently I got my hands on a module that does have an FRU, but it’s the one for the X260. So is there any difference between the two? The answer is yes, just a little.

A while back some foreigner said that starting with the ThinkPad X250 and ThinkPad T450 era, the hardware whitelist was dropped. T450 and X250 no longer have Whitelists I also found confirmation from an official rep on Lenovo’s overseas blog. Shame is, the rep only said the Wi-Fi whitelist restriction was gone. Saying it is one thing, but nobody had actually gone and tested it, so I had an itch to scratch and decided to be the guinea pig. On Taobao I ignored the seller’s warning and bought an 8260ac without an FRU: So does it work or not?

Short version: I bought a Xiaodu WiFi for 9 yuan, using a JD free-shipping coupon. Even so, the kaomoji on my keychain cost more than this thing… So, according to the official site, you’re supposed to install Baidu’s software, which bundles a one-click idiot-proof driver. One button and your current network is shared out. It’s really just a wireless adapter in hotspot mode. Which means there has to be a way to use the Xiaodu WiFi as a plain wireless adapter, because that’s what it is.