Ubuntu Is Looking At Offering Better WiFi Support By Using Intel's IWD

Ubuntu developers are looking at using Intel IWD as the iNET wireless daemon to potentially replace WPA_Supplicant for offering a better WiFi experience.

Intel's open-source team has always been working on IWD as a potential replacement to WPA_Supplicant while recently the Ubuntu folks have found it has "mostly reached feature parity" now to WPA_Supplicant albeit is in need of more testing on the desktop side.

Among the IWD functionality they are interested in is faster network discovery, more reliable roaming, less system resource usage, making use of modern Linux kernel features, support for enterprise security features, support for multiple clients, and other features.

Ubuntu hasn't decided for sure to replace WPA_Supplicant with IWD at this time but they are looking for users on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and Ubuntu 20.10 daily builds to try it out for handling their WiFi connections. Switching over right now to IWD just involves installing its package, disabling WPA_Supplicant via a systemd mask, and enabling IWD as the WiFi back-end for NetworkManager.

Those wanting to help engage in IWD testing on Ubuntu or curious how others are finding this Intel open-source project perform, see this Ubuntu Discourse thread.