The 9343 model shipped with a Broadcom wifi card, which was a PITA to get working on Linux. I swapped mine out for an Intel 7265, which has kernel support, so, any distro I throw on there works instantly without having to download a bunch of drivers.

More recent models have switched to the "Killer" brand wifi card, and I'm not sure whether those have in-kernel support or if it's another akmod thing.

Yeah, it was nice for a first few weeks and when I went travelling I got into issues. Some WiFi's did not work and a guy with a MBP next to me was just smiling :D

Just google for XPS WiFi issue and you will get plenty of results. This model should be a good fit: Intel 8265 Generic, 2230, 2x2 AC+BT (8265NGWMG), look for Intel wifi cards they are much much better than default ones.

Wifi hw is also an issue for surface pro 4 (under windows and Linux both). Apparently ms finally fixed in the 5th generation.

Anyone know if there's any really great wifi cards internal or USB, that allows full AP, "war driving" etc - and also 5ghz and such? Preferably with great drivers for Linux and freebsd?

(I doubt internal is an option for my surface pro 4, but for refurbished ThinkPads/dells it might do the trick..)

XPS's Atheros QCA6174 works fine with recent FW. I use it in AP mode in 5GHz band in ac mode, though I had to adapt a kernel patch from OpenWRT that ignores frequency regdomains. I've also tried to use Intel 8260 for this, but with no luck.

I also have the XPS and have experienced my WiFi dropping. Usually a few times a week. I've heard you can contact Dell support and they will send you a wifi adapter but I haven't tried it yet myself. Curious to hear of specific replacement options too.

I had massive issues with the Killer Wifi until I installed an (April 2018 iirc?) driver update from the Dell website. Dell's update tool didn't seem to install it.

That stinks. You would think a decent wifi chipset would be a solved problem in 2018. Especially from a company that has been shipping laptops for as long as Dell has.

Back when I was running linux on a laptop I found intel adapters to have really awesome driver support and didn't have any issues.