how to permanently disable wifi power management for linux mint 18?

Question

I have upgraded from mint 17.3 to mint 18, and now I experience irritating wifi problems, which are (probably) connected to the power management.

Before the upgrade, I had set it off in the /etc/pm/power.d/wireless file (sudo chmod +x), like:

#!/bin/sh
/sbin/iwconfig wlan0 power off

And it just worked.

Now, Mint 18 ignores these settings. Also, the wlan0 was changed to wlp2s0.

But the worst part is, even if I set the power management off in the console, I can still feel the connection is disgustingly slow, and there are constant gaps. The only way to fix that is to reset wifi... every few minutes.

This is the iwconfig output, where the power management is clearly off, but I have no internet conection:

$ iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

enp3s0    no wireless extensions.

wlp2s0    IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:"okolig"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.457 GHz  Access Point: 6C:19:8F:8D:ED:ED   
          Bit Rate=52 Mb/s   Tx-Power=16 dBm   
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=56/70  Signal level=-54 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:65   Missed beacon:0

Any help? If this problem persists, I will have to change the distro after 2 years, because working with a starving wifi card is kind of complicated.

Answer 1

The issue seems to be fixed after reinstalling the system. During installation, pick an option for installing 3rd party drivers and proprietary software.