I just spent 3 hours this week fighting the iwlwifi driver and my Intel 7265-D card. Turned out power saving mode was causing all the drops (iwconfig $iface power off).
funnily, I had the same network dropping issue due to wifi power saving on windows 10
Just got a new work machine, trying to get external ASUS usb wifi working, no luck, drops the signal like in 1-3 minutes after going live. Tested all the power saving tricks and so on, no luck, gave up.
Depends on your environment, I have a stupid wall between my router and my desk. The signal is losing ~20 dBm going through that wall. That sucks.
Well, at least Linux is not to blame for that. Or so I hope. °^_^