Hi everyone!

I've been enjoying Gnome for the last 5 years, mainly in Fedora Workstation. Lately, I've been feeling a scratch to try something else after a few annoyances with notifications or the file manager.

I've also been using KDE in Steam OS on my Steam Deck, but something doesn't feel right even if I managed to reproduce my Gnome workflow in it.

I thought that Cosmic could be the perfect middle ground and I wanted to dual boot it alongside Fedora Workstation on my second computer, an upgraded Mac Book Pro from 2012. As I enjoy Fedora, I downloaded the Fedora Cosmic Atomic version.

On this computer, you normally have to enable RPM fusion to get the broadcom drivers for the wifi. I followed the instructions related to os-tree based systems with no luck. Then I thought, let's just download the normal Fedora Cosmic as I don't need an immutable distro and the commands should be the same as for Workstation.

Despite, managing to get the Broadcom drivers, I never managed to get the wifi working in Fedora Cosmic.

I might be stupid, but I don't understand why as it's the same distro and just a different DE. Doe's anyone have an explanation?

It might be a sign that I should just live with the minor annoyances I get in Gnome, but some things looked really good in Cosmic and I'd love to dual boot it for a while..

If you're saying you started on Gnome, then dropped in another DE, you need to switch to an agnostic network manager if you were relying on Gnome's Desktop Network manager implementation probably.

If you're saying you booted a clean Fedora Cosmic LiveUSB and couldn't get WiFi working, you need to look at logs or run through some cli debugging to see what's up. Probably just Cosmic issues.

Edit: forgot about nmtui. You can use this to debug issues from the clinpretty simply if the desktop tools are failing.

I believe he should check his NM Status like this:
systemctl status NetworkManager

Or also check the logs dmesg o journalctl

Nah just to be clear, I tried to dual boot Fedora Cosmic Atomic and later Fedora Cosmic with Fedora Workstation.

Grub wasn't seeing my Fedora Workstation install anymore, so I don't think the Gnome network manager comes into account.

But I might be way out of my league as there is so much I don't understand.

Cosmic can feel pretty immature still.

I’ve had to write some of my own widgets and I mostly deal with settings through terminal controls unfortunately (e.g. Bluetooth pairing hangs if a device needs a password).

While I had no issues with my network, if it’s “unique” in some way it might have bugs still, and the terminal tools would be better.

I’m new to Linux and I haven’t really had to deal with this, so I can’t say what the right way is.

Fedora desktop (any DE, and most desktop distros, for that matter) uses networkmanager to configure networks, because it is powerful and offers an API for DEs to configure networks, so as long as you have the drivers, networking will work the same. However, If I recall correctly, Gnome and KDE use the same frontend library for networkmanager, just with different GUIs, so they really are going to be the same, and they have for many years. Cosmic being new and rust based might have rolled its own frontend or used a different library, and it might not be as mature as what the other DEs use.

Try configuring your WiFi manually, editing networkmanager's config files directly, instead of the gui. And see if that work.
I would even suggest straight up copying the config files produced by gnome or KDE.

Try using your CMOS' EFI boot manager and see if it sees both. If so, just skip Grub and use that.

To be honest, I’m not really looking for a solution anymore as I gave up on Cosmic and just decided to use more extensions in Gnome instead.

The thing is, these problems show me that Linux can still be difficult to use if you don’t have hardware perfectly suited to it.

Even when you think that you now know enough about how to solve problems, all your previous solutions can be useless😅

That’s fair.

I went gnome -> kde -> cosmic -> kde -> cosmic.

And I’m thinking of trying hyperland or something built on river so I can more customization.

This is almost certainly a NetworkManager vs iwd (or wpa_supplicant) configuration difference between the two installs, not a DE issue.

Here is how to debug it:

1. Check which WiFi backend each install uses:

   # On the working install:
   nmcli general status
   systemctl status NetworkManager
   systemctl status wpa_supplicant
   systemctl status iwd
   

   Do the same on the broken one and compare.

2. Check if the WiFi adapter is even detected:

   ip link show
   rfkill list
   

   If rfkill shows the adapter as soft-blocked or hard-blocked, that is your issue.

3. Check firmware:

   dmesg | grep -i firmware
   dmesg | grep -i wifi
   dmesg | grep -i iwl  # if Intel
   

   Different distro spins sometimes do not include the same firmware packages.

4. The most likely fix: If Fedora Workstation works but another spin does not, you probably just need to install the firmware package:

   sudo dnf install linux-firmware
   

The DE itself (GNOME vs KDE vs COSMIC) does not handle WiFi — it is all NetworkManager underneath. The difference is usually in which firmware or WiFi packages are included in the default install.

I run Linux on a 2012 MBP, and the WiFi has got more and more problematic the last few years.

Buying a TP-Link USB WiFi adapter and just using that made my Linux life so much more straightforward.

I don’t think the Broadcom card was capable of supporting WPA3 anyway.