Wifi on Dell 7490 Won't Turn On

[frogprince]

Hi: I had trouble with the trackpad on a Dell E6420 running Ghost BSD, so I found

You can totally install FreeBSD on these laptops without issues, claims OS maintainer

A new initiative highlights which laptops can run FreeBSD without issues, indicating broader hardware support than many might expect.

www.neowin.net

and purchased a Dell Latitude 7490, which was recommended on the above post as having no issues with BSD. But mine will not turn on the wireless card. Running MATE on GhostBSD with FreeBSD 15.0 from a USB drive (which does not allow me to edit /etc) , I cannot see any SSID's to connect to, and hovering over the MATE NetworkMgr icon, I get an error message that states that the wireless card is not turned on. I checked the BIOS, and there are two places under wireless that are checked "on". The machine came with Win 11 Pro, and that works, and I also checked it with MX Linux XFCE 25 from a USB drive, and that works, so it's not the card. The card itself is a Qualcomm QCA61x4A 802.11 ac. Despite the recommendation from neowin.net, I did not find this card on the list of supported wifi hardware at

FreeBSD 15.0 Hardware Notes

www.freebsd.org

Can anyone offer any suggestions on how to get this to work? Do I have to actually install BSD to get it to work? Thanks in advance

 

[SirDice]

GhostBSD is not supported here.

Thread 'GhostBSD, pfSense, TrueNAS, and all other FreeBSD Derivatives'

Sep 25, 2009

Questions about 'derivative FreeBSDs', like

• GhostBSD
• TrueNAS
• XigmaNAS
• OPNsense
• pfSense
• BSD Router Project
• NomadBSD
• helloSystem
• HardenedBSD

should be asked on the forums and/or mailing lists for these specific products. See below for links.

If you still think your questions should be asked here, beware of the following:

• To show that you have indeed tried to get a solution from the forum or mailing list of the...

• DutchDaemon
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Dell Latitude 7490, which was recommended on the above post as having no issues with BSD.

Aye. This lists the same model:

FreeBSD Laptop Compatibility

freebsdfoundation.github.io

But, if you inspect the probe information, it mentions an Intel AX210, not the Qualcomm you have.

- Networking
  Device 1 Status: DETECTED
    em0@pci0:0:31:6:	class=0x020000 rev=0x21 hdr=0x00 vendor=0x8086 device=0x15d7 subvendor=0x1028 subdevice=0x081c
        vendor     = 'Intel Corporation'
        device     = 'Ethernet Connection (4) I219-LM'
        class      = network
  Device 2 Status: WORKS
    iwlwifi0@pci0:2:0:0:	class=0x028000 rev=0x1a hdr=0x00 vendor=0x8086 device=0x2725 subvendor=0x8086 subdevice=0x0024
        vendor     = 'Intel Corporation'
        device     = 'Wi-Fi 6E(802.11ax) AX210/AX1675* 2x2 [Typhoon Peak]'
        class      = network

  Category Total Score: 2/2

freebsd-laptop-testing/test_results/Dell_Latitude_7490/probe_2026-04-07_22-34-15.txt at main · FreeBSDFoundation/freebsd-laptop-testing

FreeBSD Laptop Integration Testing Project. Contribute to FreeBSDFoundation/freebsd-laptop-testing development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

That Intel AX210 certainly is supported, the Qualcomm QCA61x4A isn't. Don't know why yours has a different Wifi chipset, maybe Dell switched to a different supplier, or used whatever was in stock at the time. These things are usually in an M.2 socket on the mainboard nowadays, so easily swapped out for something else.