Is your 'WIFI' driver on Linux Machine isn't working? maybe I can help you.

February 24, 2019 (5y ago)

When I switched to linux in the beginning, I experienced that the wifi on my machine wasn't working. So, I changed countless numbers of OS, drivers & went through various forums, repo for a solution to fix wifi which was not working on my notebook. After hours of search I finally found the fix for it. I'm posting it here so that anyone with the same problem could get help:

If your wireless driver is rtl8192ce, rtl8192cu, rtl8192se, rtl8192de, rtl8188ee, rtl8192ee, rtl8723ae, rtl8723be, rtl8821ae, rtl8822be or rtl8723de (from Realtek) doesn't work on a Linux Machine then this post is for you, follow:

*prerequisite: You will need git, make, and gcc installed for those commands to work. You will also need the kernel headers development package.

Open Terminal Window on your machine. (usually CTRL + ALT + T)

Check what drivers your wireless adapter is currently using, you may run the following command:

sudo lshw -C network

  • lshw lists information on your hardware
  • -C network filters the output to only show the network class.

In the output, look for the entry with description: Wireless interface

You can also use the command: lspci

When you post lspci output, you should always use the -nn flags, i.e. lspci -nn. That way, the PCI IDs will be listed. Those are important because that is the information that tells the kernel what driver to load.

!Do the following commands AS A REGULAR USER WITHOUT SUDO:

In my case, the driver I have is an RTL8723DE device as the ID for it is 10ec:d723. Therfore, I need the extended branch of this repo:

git clone https://github.com/lwfinger/rtlwifi_new.git -b extended

OR you can just use: git clone https://github.com/lwfinger/rtlwifi_new.git

then do these commands in sequence:

cd rtlwifi_new

make

sudo make install

then reboot to your firmware settings (BIOS) to switch "Secure Boot" OFF by:

systemctl reboot --firmware-setup

Incase if "Secure Boot" is already OFF then:

sudo reboot

Note:

  1. You'll need to repeat the make & sudo make install steps with any kernel updates. (or the wifi will fail again.) tip: Use git pull.
  2. You may experience wifi Signal for Rtl8723DE & Rtl8723BE drivers to be low, especially on HP devices, which maybe is a bug.