NETIS WF2122 300MBPS WIRELESS N USB ADAPTER
Hello,
I would like to share my experience with you for this usb wifi dongle „NETIS WF2122 300MBPS WIRELESS N USB ADAPTER“
It is working out of the box with the current Trisquel kernel 4.4.x and the 5.4.39-gnu. I was surprised. I didn't expected.
I tried making an entry at h-node.org but I found it was already registered under a different Vendor Name that was not working with an older kernel.
Here are further information and two pictures.
NETIS WF2122 300MBPS WIRELESS N USB ADAPTER
ID 0bda:8178 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8192CU 802.11n WLAN Adapter
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| PER.617936.jpg | 43.93 KB |
| IMG_20200508_223016.jpg | 146.4 KB |
Nice job.
We should advertise the most commonly available wifi dongle that works with linux-libre.
We could make the options simple like:
IDEAL CHOICES:
-think penguin
-technoethical
MOST COMMON/CHEAPEST CHOICES:
-
-
I am a member!
It shouldn't work and if it does it is the result of a bug. The chipset depends on a driver which includes non-free binary firmware embedded in its driver. Apparently there may be a license issue as well, although that seems odd to me, given that the driver itself is licensed presumably and I would imagine is thus redistributable under the GNU GPL. In any event I have not looked into this further or in great depth, but either way it's probably fair to say, no, it's not free software friendly.
See:
It is possible that very few non-Atheros cards do work without non-free firmware.
Realtek wifi cards started working on a hit or miss basis with the Linux-libre kernel at least a couple of years ago. I'm surprised you did not know that Chris. There was some effort to put basic instructions in for them, and some of them work just fine. I have a Samsung laptop with a Realtek chip that has worked perfectly with Linux-libre and no drivers for over 2 years now.
Hello,
I made a research about the driver RTL8192CU. I found the source code under GPL 2 license here:
https://code.woboq.org/linux/linux/drivers/net/wireless/realtek/rtlwifi/rtl8192cu/dm.c.html
I'm attaching some pictures from the loaded kernel modules. I would say it is free software, or maybe I'm wrong?
The problem is not the driver, which must be under the GNU GPL, when distributed with the rest of the kernel. The problem is the firmware, which is not really part of the kernel. It is a separate binary file that the kernel simply sends to the peripheral to be executed there (not on the main CPU). As andyprough wrote, some Realtek Wifi chipsets work even if the firmware is not sent.
how do you install free kernel
4.4.x on debian 10?
Thank you.
Follow the instructions on https://jxself.org/linux-libre/ (and notice that the 4.4 version is supported until January 2022, which is not that far away).
I got a
https://www.newegg.com/comfast-cf-wu825n-usb-2-0/p/0XM-000R-00045
vid pid 0bda8178
It got tested on trisquel 8
4.4.0 178
It works.
Where is the software for the wifi card located on
trisquel?
It runs on debian 9 main kernel version 4.9.0 12 and
debian 10 main kernel version 4.19.0 9 and debian
10 main kernel version libre 5.7.7.