2021-10-30 16:42:48

by sladyrko

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Subject: WiFi card not supported

Hello, I got a new laptop and my WiFi card is not discovered.
This fixed it for me but it's inconvenient to make it every time I update kernel : https://github.com/lwfinger/rtw89 , please add the drivers in the kernel. Thank you.


2021-10-30 18:09:00

by Larry Finger

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Subject: Re: WiFi card not supported

On 10/30/21 11:38, [email protected] wrote:
> Hello, I got a new laptop and my WiFi card is not discovered.
> This fixed it for me but it's inconvenient to make it every time I update kernel : https://github.com/lwfinger/rtw89 , please add the drivers in the kernel. Thank you.

I am already regretting publishing this E-mail address to the rtw89 users at
GitHub!!

In the README.md at the GitHub repo is the statement:

"When you have problems where the driver builds and loads correctly, but fails
to work, a GitHub issue is NOT the best place to report it. I have no idea of
the internal workings of any of the chips, and the Realtek engineers who do will
not read these issues. To reach them, send E-mail to
[email protected]. Include a detailed description of any messages
in the kernel logs and any steps that you have taken to analyze or fix the
problem. If your description is not complete, you are unlikely to get any
satisfaction. One other thing - your mail MUST be plain test. HTML mail is
rejected."

Your description is far from complete. In particular, you fail to note what
distro and version you are using. In addition, you are not reporting a failure
of the driver.

Apparently, the following sequence, also from README.md, is too inconvenient for
you:

cd ~/rtw89
git pull
make
sudo make install

In that case, you should research the use of DKMS (the configuration file is in
the repo), or switch to a distro that already includes rtw89 in its kernel, or
as a standard package. Two examples are openSUSE Tumbleweed (in kernel) and
openSUSE Leap 15.3 (package). I am sure there are others, but like you, I do not
like doing much research!

As to your request, a simple web search for "rtw89 linux"would have found the
following:
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Realtek-802.11ax-rtw89
https://www.newsbreak.com/news/2404818553553/realtek-802-11ax-wifi-driver-rtw89-queued-ahead-of-linux-5-16

Those articles report that the driver will be in kernel 5.16. That may not help
you for some time, as most distros run kernels that are far from "Bleeding
Edge". In addition, kernel 5.15 is not yet released. Once that happens, there
will be at least 10 weeks more before 5.16 would be r3eleased.

Larry