USB WiFi Adapter Information

[morrownr]

Being a high risk person has limited my mobility for many months now due to the virus. In preparation for a project I have later this year, hopefully, I needed to learn Github. While trying to figure out the best way to make that happen, I decided to try to be of service to my fellow Mint/Ubuntu users by providing a good place to find out-of-kernel drivers and information about USB WiFi adapters. I've been working for several months now and the drivers have had a lot of testing at this point. The drivers and information can be found here:

https://github.com/morrownr

The USB-WiFi repo contains a lot of information to include links to many adapters that are available for purchase that use in-kernel drivers. My opinion is that many folks, especially inexperienced users, would be best served by buying good adapters that work with in-kernel drivers. If anyone has an adapter that works with in-kernel drivers and it is not already listed please forward me a link so that I can add it to the list.

If you already own an adapter that requires an out-of-kernel Realtek driver, this site has drivers that cover 9 chipsets. I consider the jewel of the drivers to be the one for the rtl8812au. If you have an adapter that uses this chipset, you want this driver, not the one included in Mint/Ubuntu (which is several years old.) Go check the date and additional features then test it out and tell me if I am correct.

Nick

Mods: you are welcome to sticky this message if you want.

[steveis2]

Hi,
Thanks for finding a really useful link. It's just what I was looking for.

Regards Steve

[hglee]

Driver installation using git often involves a build (compiling) from source code, preferably using dkms -- but not every distro includes the essential software tools needed to do this.

For Ubuntu-based distros, such as Mint, it's best to include the build-essential package, which will install compiler, utilities, and code libraries. Ubuntu includes build-essential by default, but Mint does not. Mint includes dkms by default, but Ubuntu does not. Neither include git by default.

Step 3: Install the required packages, for Mint and Ubuntu, should be this...

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install -y git dkms build-essential

[morrownr]

I appreciate the input. Can I get you to run the follow on Mint?

Code: Select all

$ apt-cache showpkg dkms

I think you will find that build-essential is a dependency of dkms.

I do a lot of testing of the installation instructions on clean installations. This has not been a problem on Mint or the Buntus. LMDE is a different animal but then I have a different instruction for it.

If I am missing something, please provide a specific case so that I can test it.

Regards.

[hglee]

I think you will find that build-essential is a dependency of dkms.

I've installed Mint many times, over the years. By default, dkms is installed, but build-essential is not.

This is from a new install of Mint 20.1 MATE today, while fully updated...

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newmint@vbox3:~/Desktop$ sudo apt install dkms build-essential
[sudo] password for newmint:            
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
dkms is already the newest version (2.8.1-5ubuntu1).
The following additional packages will be installed:
  g++ g++-9 libstdc++-9-dev
Suggested packages:
  g++-multilib g++-9-multilib gcc-9-doc libstdc++-9-doc
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  build-essential g++ g++-9 libstdc++-9-dev
0 upgraded, 4 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 10.1 MB of archives.
After this operation, 46.8 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] 

I've also installed Ubuntu many times, over the years. By default, build-essential is installed, but dkms is not.

This is from a new install of Ubuntu 20.04 MATE, fully updated...

Code: Select all

newubu@vbox3:~/Desktop$ sudo apt install dkms build-essential
[sudo] password for newubu: 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
build-essential is already the newest version (12.8ubuntu1.1).
The following package was automatically installed and is no longer required:
  libllvm9
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove it.
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  dkms
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 2 not upgraded.
Need to get 66.6 kB of archives.
After this operation, 296 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

The "2 not upgraded" in Ubuntu were update-notifier and update-notifier-common.