No WiFi interface on Intel NUC running Ubuntu 16.04

Question

I have installed Ubuntu 16.04 Server edition on an Intel NUC. The device has a wifi card installed, but when I run lspci, it only shows up as an unknown network controller. After installing network-tools, I can run iwconfig, but it doesn't list any wireless network interface!

Answer 1

The default 16.04 server edition of Ubuntu comes with the 4.4 version of the Linux kernel; that kernel does not have support built in for the Intel NUC wifi card.

To get the card working, you need to install a newer version of the kernel. As of this writing, 16.04 supports the 4.13 kernel version, and the wifi card will show right up once you upgrade.

The package you need is this one: https://packages.ubuntu.com/xenial/linux-image-generic-hwe-16.04

If you have a wired connection, you simply apt install linux-image-generic-hwe-16.04. If not, you'll need to manually download the package above, along with any mandatory dependencies you don't already have, put them on a USB drive and install manually via dpkg -i <package.deb>. For me, I needed the following packages:

linux-firmware_1.157.16_all.deb
linux-headers-4.13.0-36_4.13.0-36.40_16.04.1_all.deb
linux-headers-4.13.0-36-generic_4.13.0-36.40_16.04.1_amd64.deb
linux-image-4.13.0-36-generic_4.13.0-36.40_16.04.1_amd64.deb
linux-image-extra-4.13.0-36-generic_4.13.0-36.40_16.04.1_amd64.deb
linux-image-generic-hwe-16.04_4.13.0.36.55_amd64.deb

Once you've installed the new kernel, restart and hold down shift while booting; pick "Advanced" options and choose the new kernel. You should now see the device show up if you run lspci.