Baby's first clicks
Hey all, I'm incredibly new to Linux as a platform, and have been trying desperately to troubleshoot my wifi for the past half an hour with any forums/tutorials already available here and elsewhere.
The problem that I'm trying to solve is that my wifi USB adapter isn't showing up, and by proxy, Bazzite is saying that there's no available connections.
If it helps, my USB Wifi adapter is a TP-Link Archer TX1800U Nano, if there are any compatibility issues. Could be as simple as me having to take a loss on this adapter and grabbing another compatible Wifi-6 USB adapter.
Due to my inexperience with linux, the furthest I could get is opening up the system settings for Wifi and Networking, and just gawking at the "Add New Connection" window.
Any and all help is appreciated, thank you in advance!
15 Replies
And we can continue in here. Ah good you have the model
Strange. TP-Link is usually linux friendly but lemme see what chipset it has
Also if we find a solution just post it in here and mark it solved :P
Will do!
BUT if iwd doesn't work it looks like the chipset is compatible with the RTL8852au driver, and the chipset is a Realtek RTL8832AU
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/rtl8852au-dkms-git
That would be an AUR package for it that looks to be from 2023 before the malware annoyances, but still to be used with caution.
I sadly can't find many other entries other than a github with the driver.
It's common in a lot of nano adapters.
That should help anyone else that pops in here have a good starting point.
(Since I've hit about what I can help with)
Haven't done driver installs in eons. Much less with a read only root.
Which is a bandaid solution as if you did manage to install it it'd be overridden every update if applied to the core system itself, but I'm not sure what arch distroboxes are capable of
But that may be your solution
I just don't have any hardware to replicate a solution with so I wouldn't even be able to help XD Otherwise I could reproduce the problem and try to solve it.
Yeah, it'd be hard to justify coughing up an extra $50 or so for an adapter, not to mention the entire pc behind it :p
Might be able to find a cheaper one with the right chipset but yes.
For now if iwd doesn't work you'll probably need someone that can confirm if a driver can be installed with the arch or other distrobox. With the driver info above that should help anyone that steps in have a good head start.
Unfortunate case of hardware that manufacturers were a jerk with the drivers.
But there IS a driver. So the only question is how to install it if it can be. And that's out of my skillset with bazzite but I'm sure someone can.
Mhm mhmm
So I'm guessing that I'd have to find another place to download the driver, and then install it onto a flash drive to put on the pc, if I can't just say, install it via the terminal?
Yeah you can't install it. It's a DKMS module which would hook into the kernel, and that part of bazzite is read only. BUT a distrobox would let you basically create a sub linux that may be able to do it.
I just have zero experience in it
The AUR package may be a good starting point there. So the only question is if you can use a distrobox to install a DKMS module to load into the kernel
And someone to verify the AUR package is safe since they're all user provided and recently it's had malware problems but older packages are USUALLY still okay.
It's only happened in thelast year with the surge of windows users going to catchyOS.
So you'll just need someone familiar with distroboxes and the AUR to give you a hand to see if the solution is possible.
Worst comes to worst you can always grab Nobara which you can treat almost entirely like bazzite, though it's flatpak store is pretty...annoying to install stuff with.
Point is you have solutions. The question is which one
If I could help further I absolutely would, but (un)fortunately all my hardware has been linux kosher. So I'd have to go out and buy it myself to figure it out on my own
And last time I did anything with dkms modules was like 2010
So grossly outdate
I'm old shush
The worst part of getting older is you stay stupid but your back hurts.
And teeth. The worst part is teeth.
Hey I wasn't meaning to throw shade at age, I'm sadly right there with you about the back aches. Then again, I do trucking for a living rn...,
I'm just fat.
So it's my fault
Now then I should pass out.
https://discordapp.com/channels/1072614816579063828/1422033560281419897/1422041758069428284
For the next person up here's your starting point!
You should feel free to ask if anyone is familiar with distrobox with arch and aur or an alternative in the bazzite main chat when it's not so late at night in a lot of places or too early to see if any of the solutions are viable.
But yeah, either way, its good to hear there's a solution. Hopefully by the time I get back around to fussing with this next weekend I can get a bit more work done, I just got duped by some overly simplified installation videos on this being a one-and-done thing. Again, knowing my luck, I should've expected otherwise :p
The title of this threads definitely apt though, haven't messed with linux since I tried resurrecting an old optiplex with mint in 2017 (the original 15+ year old HDD died in the process, woops), so some basic Linux concepts might need to be explained. I'll be sure to ask for clarification if needed.
Again, thank yall for the help and gn for now!
You just so happened to unfortunately grab a wifi adapter with one of the few realtek chipsets that was problematic :P
I'm sure in the future it'll see a driver hit kernel, but it might take awhile
Most of the nano adapters seem to use it, though.
Womp womp
Guess I'll just see to grabbing a different adapter then, or ordering one so it can be here next week(?) If there's a recommendation list I'd be happy to see it!
Again, thank you for taking a look! This is a great intro to Linux, genuinely lmao
Or just, try a different distro, for free, either or :p
Hey no problem. We help eachother (outside arch) :P
For dongle the best thing to look up is probably just search the chipset of the model. While I don't usually recommend it LLMs are usually a fast way to learn the internal chipset if the manufacturer won't list the damn thing. I usually recommend against that though as it can still be inaccurate.
Best to avoid broadcom. And once you know the chipset check for linux compatibility and try to avoid ones that have any drivers to hand install.
Sadly I can't recommend much more than basics to cover to check linux compatibility as mine are motherboard built in.
Guess I'm using win10 for the time being.
One other solution I came across while snooping around us that sometimes, while having both OSes, Windows sometimes doesn't shut down all the way, and for lack of a better word, holds the wifi adapter hostage to where it cant be seen by the Linux distro. Its odd and I wish I kept track of that forum, but it could be another, less possible explanation for what's going on.
Idk about you, but I'm not about to do the equivalent of blowing up a perfectly good boat so I can float on a dinghy and hope that fixes it.
Something I recalled and thought to mention, at least,,
Also came across this list of possible USB wifi adapters that are more likely to work with linux out the box, hence the "in kernel" drivers
https://github.com/morrownr/USB-WiFi/blob/main/home/USB_WiFi_Adapters_that_are_supported_with_Linux_in-kernel_drivers.md
GitHub
USB-WiFi/home/USB_WiFi_Adapters_that_are_supported_with_Linux_in-ke...
USB WiFi Adapter Information for Linux. Contribute to morrownr/USB-WiFi development by creating an account on GitHub.