I know it looks like a common problem, but the thing is: after having normal network connectivity during the live session, install and the still after the first reboot, it all stopped working after a night in suspend mode.
I usually have Wi-Fi connectivity enabled, but never bother connecting to my wireless network as I have ethernet connected too. That’s how it went during live, install and first boot. When installation was finished I did a reboot, installed some software* then put the machine on ‘suspend’ and went to bed.
As I woke up the following day I had no connectivity. The ethernet interface could not be found and strangely Wi-Fi could only see one obscure network - and it wasn’t mine. Restarted the computer and Wi-Fi came back to normal, but I still have no ethernet at all. I did a lot of research on Google, switched cables, reset BIOS/UEFI to factory defaults, flashed BIOS, tried live sessions and reinstalled Debian, vanilla Ubuntu and Mate again, upgraded it to 16.10 and still I have no ethernet, only Wi-Fi.
I read somewhere that the ethernet port on Gigabyte MBs has durability issues. So the fact that ethernet now doesn’t work with other distros too makes it look like a physical problem. The only thing that leaves me still wondering is that Wi-Fi stopped too, but got back to properly funcioning after a reboot, whereas ethernet didn’t.
Well, that’s it. Does anybody have at least an idea of what happened and if there’s a solution?
Thanks a lot!
*I don’t know if it’s of any use, but the software I installed was Chromium, Chrome, Tor browser, Atom Text Editor and Musescore. My MB is a GA-Z97M-D3H, with onboard ethernet, sound and graphics. 8GB RAM.
(EDIT: minor clarifications and made the first paragraph more to the point, sort of a TL;DR)