Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174

The Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174 is 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter which is used in some laptops.]]

To make it work it needs the kernel driver and firmware.

Kernel driver
Enable Atheros 802.11ac wireless cards support ( CONFIG_ATH10K ) and Atheros ath10k PCI support ( CONFIG_ATH10K_PCI ) as modules  :

Set it as a module  as shown here. After changes on kernel configuration do not forget to rebuild the kernel.

After rebuilding the kernel and reboot the selected options could be verified (needs Kernel/IKCONFIG_Support) like

should then display the adapter like:

Firmware
The Qualcomm Atheros Killer N1525 Wireless-AC requires Linux firmware files.

At the time of writing, =sys-kernel/linux-firmware-20161205 doesn't seem to work with the Atheros wireless card. One manual step is still required to update to a working firmware. First backup the previous one.

Then download the working one.

This is what you should end up having.

Find out more on GitHub kvalo/ath10k-firmware.

External resources

 * https://gist.github.com/harrykipper/d1bedb234c4af0692f7ccd33329a02d7 - Unofficial patch to increase TX rate to more moderate speeds.
 * wireless.wiki.kernel.org
 * Official upstream ath10k-firmware by Kalle Valo on GitHub
 * Kernel drivers on cateee.net
 * patchwork.kernel.org — Patchwork ath10k project mail archive.