RTL8723AE PCIe Wireless Network Adapter

Is this installed on a laptop?

If so, two options to keep your system 100% free are:

1) Replace the physical RTL Module in your laptop.

2) Use a free wireless USB dongle to connect to wireless.

Some details about 1) are here (ctrl-f for RTL):

http://blogs.fsfe.org/the_unconventional/2013/06/12/avoiding-the-microsoft-tax/

and some details about 2) are in these previous posts:

https://trisquel.info/en/forum/recommend-me-usb-wifi-dongle-please

https://trisquel.info/en/forum/d-link-dwa-125-wireless-dongle

The information linked is a little out of date although the answers correct.

There are a few USB chipsets that are compatible with free software and dongle options and it may also be possible to replace the wireless card in your system depending on the manufacturer.

If it's an HP, Dell, Toshiba, or IBM/Lenovo machine you may not have good results with replacing the wifi card. These companies use digital restriction in the BIOS to prevent third party wifi cards from being installed. For most other brands this is not a problem. If it is a laptop you will need a half height mini pcie wireless card. You can get ones that work well with Trisquel at http://libre.thinkpenguin.com and if purchase one it will also help fund Trisquel development. 25% of the profits are donated to the project. It also helps ensure a vibrant market for free software friendly hardware.

The other option is a USB dongle. There are a few chipsets that are an option. The ones that should just work at the moment with Trisquel 6 are RTL8187B/RTL8187L/RTL8187. It's a discontinued G chipset that either has or is going to be hard to find very shortly. Though we will continue stocking them at ThinkPenguin for a while to come. The USB G wireless adapter @ ThinkPenguin uses the RTL8187B chipset.

The other option is the AR9271 USB N wireless chipset. This is not yet supported out of the box although it is fairly easy to get working if you apply all updates and download the free software firmware. If your not a technical sort of user I'd suggest the the chipsets above as they will "just work". Once you have the updates applied and firmware downloaded these cards should just work too. We have two adapters with this chipset now at ThinkPenguin.