what does it mean if Linux thinks my WiFi card is an Ethernet interface?

I have two laptops, both of which are believed to contain a Intel Wireless-AC 9260 2x2 802.11ac + BT5.0 (vPro) WiFi card. On one laptop, running Ubuntu 22.04, the OS identifies the card as a Wireless interface with wireless capabilities. $ sudo lshw -C network *-network description: Wireless interface product: Wireless-AC 9260 vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:3b:00.0 logical name: wlp59s0 version: 29 serial: d4:3b:04:cb:24:92 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless configuration: broadcast=yes dr

Question by Dianna on Super User, licensed CC BY-SA. We show a short excerpt and link to the original thread as credit.