Gigabyte X870M Aorus Elite Wifi7, RTL8922AE Wi-Fi broken on Bazzite 44 (Kernel 7.0+) due to mac80211 API changes

Bazzite
1

Description:
After updating to the Bazzite 44 Testing branch (specifically versions using the OGC Kernel 7.0+), the Realtek RTL8922AE Wi-Fi adapter (found on motherboards like the Gigabyte X870M Aorus Elite Wifi7) stops working. The driver functions perfectly on Bazzite 43 Stable (Kernel 6.17).

Technical Analysis:
The issue is caused by architectural changes in the Linux Kernel upstream (starting from 6.18/6.19 and finalized in 7.0) regarding the mac80211 subsystem and the rtw89 driver:

  1. ieee80211_ops Signature Mismatch: The kernel now supports multiple radios per wiphy to accommodate Wi-Fi 7 MLO (Multi-Link Operation). This changed the signatures of several callbacks in struct ieee80211_ops (e.g., .config, .stop, .set_rts_threshold), adding the radio_idx parameter.
  2. Removal of init_dummy_netdev: The legacy function init_dummy_netdev was removed/replaced by alloc_netdev_dummy() to support flexible arrays in net_device.
  3. Result: The rtw89 module currently included in the OGC kernel build appears to be out of sync with these API changes, leading to incompatible-pointer-types errors during compilation or failure to initialize at runtime.

Hardware Information:

  • Motherboard: Gigabyte X870M Aorus Elite Wifi7
  • Chipset: Realtek RTL8922AE
  • Driver: rtw89_8922ae

Steps to Reproduce:

  1. Use a system with RTL8922AE on Bazzite 43 Stable (Kernel 6.17) → Wi-Fi works.
  2. Rebase to Bazzite 44 Testing (Kernel 7.0+) → Wi-Fi adapter disappears or fails to initialize.

Additional Context:
Upstream patches for rtw89 to address these changes are available in the rtw-next tree and have been discussed in the linux-wireless mailing list. The OGC kernel likely needs to sync with the latest rtw89 fixes for Kernel 7.0 compatibility.

What did you expect to happen?

I expected the rtw89 driver to be correctly initialized by the Kernel 7.0+ OGC build, maintaining full hardware support for the RTL8922AE chipset without regressions in connectivity.

Session Logs

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Hardware

Gigabyte X870M Aorus Elite Wifi7
Chip Realtek RTL8922AE

Extra information or context

The root cause appears to be the mismatch between the rtw89 driver and the new mac80211 API introduced in recent kernels (6.18+ and 7.0). Specifically, the transition to support Multi-Link Operation (MLO) for Wi-Fi 7 added a radio_idx parameter to several callbacks in struct ieee80211_ops (such as .config and .stop).
Additionally, the removal of init_dummy_netdev in favor of alloc_netdev_dummy() in the upstream wireless subsystem causes compilation/initialization failures for older versions of the rtw89 module. Since Bazzite uses the OGC kernel, it likely needs a sync with the latest rtw-next patches from Realtek (Ping-Ke Shih) to restore support for the RTL8922AE chipset on this new kernel base.