I have been running Gentoo with a custom configured kernel for a while now, and I noticed that at the same locations the WLAN speed is always noticeably lower than with the official Debian image. I am 99% certain that I am not imagining things. Even if I sit right next to my access point, my Gentoo setup doesn’t go above 4 MBit/s, while Debian easily goes beyond 20 MBit/s there. Since I am using the same laptop, just different software, it has to be a driver setting or driver version difference…
I have already checked the firmware, and the version in Debian and Gentoo is identical. Gentoo is also on a slightly newer kernel version than the Debian image I use for comparison (6.6.21 to be precise).
I have no idea why, but I might have an idea for how to narrow down the source of the issue further. Try booting the Debian kernel on your Gentoo set-up and see if that helps. This will tell us whether it’s a kernel or a userspace issue.
Download the debian packages for the kernel from the mnt apt repository, extract them using deb2targz or similar, …
Actually, who am I telling this to. I’m guessing you know how to do it…
I am planning to do exactly that later. I am going to use an SD-Card with Debian and a modified boot.scr to launch the Debian kernel with my Gentoo partition as root file system, but I am not at home over the holidays, so I don’t have any spare SD cards at hand right now.
Okay, I am starting to doubt my own memory… I am back home now, and cannot reproduce the discrepancy with my own access point any more. Download speeds are around 30 MBit, with both operating systems…
Maybe my memory has failed me, or a recent kernel update on Gentoo has fixed the problem (Gentoo was on 6.6.13 until recently).
I originally had noticed the discrepancy at my parents’ place. I will be visiting them later this week, and will try to reproduce it with their router.
I will bring the Debian SD card and a spare one to mix&match kernels and userlands.