In Search of a WiFi Adapter
After getting an Azio keyboard, I learned my lesson. Always check to make sure a device will work with Linux. Because I was moving to a suite that only had WiFi, I was going to need to get an adapter for my workstation. After a fair bit of searching, I settled on the Asus USB N13:
I plugged the device into my computer and Kubuntu immediately recognized it. A few minutes later, I was on Internet. A few minutes after that, I was not. On and off this thing went, like an Internet yo-yo. Additionally, every time it connected it wanted the WiFi password again.
After searching around quite a bit, it became apparent that behaviour I was seeing was a widely known problem with the kernel driver.
Linux Drivers
My first thought was to return this thing and get something that was better supported. Unfortunately there were not any better options available to me and who knew if they would work. Apparently “Supports Linux” is a vague thing.
So I downloaded the driver from Asus’s site and tried to build it. That failed with the following:
dep_service.h:49:29: fatal error: linux/smp_lock.h: No such file or directory
#include <linux/smp_lock.h>
Since the device has a rtl8192cu chipset in it, I headed over to Realtek’s website to download their version of the driver. Right away I knew I probably was out of luck. Their website says that the driver supports Linux Kernel 2.6.18 ~ 3.9. I am running Kubuntu 14.04, which has kernel version 3.13.
I decided to try compiling it anyway, but was not surprised when I got an error. The compiler was complaining that proc_dir_entry did not exist. After a bit of search, I found that proc_dir_entry had moved to /fs/proc/internal.h. It was formerly in /linux/fs_proc.h to /fs/proc/internal.h. Turns out that file was not in my kernel headers, so I had to get the kernel source:
apt-get source linux
Then I copied the internal.h to /usr/src/linux-headers-$(uname -r)/fs/proc. I then modified the source file to include the header. After recompiling, I got the following error:
os_dep/linux/os_intfs.c:313:3: error: implicit declaration of function ‘create_proc_entry’ [-Werror=implicit-function-declaration]
rtw_proc=create_proc_entry(rtw_proc_name, S_IFDIR, init_net.proc_net);
It turns out that create_proc_entry has been deprecated in favour of proc_create. I tried changing the call, but unsurprisingly, the interface had changed too. At that point I gave up on the Linux driver.
NDISWrapper
So I went back to the Realtek site and downloaded the Windows driver, hoping to use NDISWrapper to load them. I do not know a lot about NDISWrapper, so I downloaded the GTK frontend:
sudo apt install ndisgtk
Figuring the oldest driver interface would be the most reliable, I went for the WinXP 32-bit driver first. It immediately told me that it was an invalid driver. I decided to jump over the notoriously flaky Vista drivers and go for the Win7 32-bit driver. That also seemed to be invalid. It turns out that going for the best driver was silly. I, of course, needed a 64-bit driver for my 64-bit OS.
Knowing that WinXP 64-bit drivers also fairly hit and miss, I went straight for the 64-bit Win7 driver. This driver loaded, but failed to work. Looking in dmesg there is no error. It just fails silently.
After searching and searching, I finally found this Ask Ubuntu question:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/246236/compile-and-install-rtl8192cu-driver
User mchid points to a github repo that finally gave me a working driver:
https://github.com/pvaret/rtl8192cu-fixes
It appears that the owner of the repo simply removed all the proc code from the driver.
Conclusion
Why does the out of the box Linux driver suck so bad? Why is it not dropped in favour of the GPL one written by Realtek? Having two drivers that both do not work is asinine.
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