this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2024
28 points (93.8% liked)

Linux

48013 readers
885 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Where would I look for a list of what network chips are supported in any given kernel? I'm looking to build my first computer designed from the ground up for Linux and want to be sure that the Ethernet port and WiFi chip will work without needing to do anything special.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works 7 points 6 months ago (2 children)
[–] Rustmilian@lemmy.world 7 points 6 months ago

linux-hardware.org and it's hw-probe tool are also very good.

[–] sic_semper_tyrannis@lemmy.today 2 points 6 months ago (3 children)

On the wikidevi ru site it lists the chip I'm interested in, the Realtek RTL8852CE. What am I looking for in the tables that indicate it works with a said kernel?

[–] azvasKvklenko@sh.itjust.works 3 points 6 months ago

It’s much easier to lookup for info on hardware when you’ve got vendor/product ID or line from lsusb/lspci.

As far as my quick googling goes, one user asked for help on Linux Mint forums as the Wifi wasn’t detected by default. They advised them to upgrade kernel to a newer version and the problem was solved.

Interestingly, there’s that post on HP forums about Windows driver quality being crap and the card actually working better on Linux with its unofficial driver xD https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Wireless-and-Networking/Realtek-8852CE-throughput-issues-and-does-not-support-160/td-p/9031507

[–] Babbiorsetto@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 6 months ago (2 children)

It looks like there's no devices listed for that chipset yet. Assuming there were any, you would go to the device's page and check the table on the right for something like "probable linux drivers". If you want a plug and play experience you need to look for one where the drivers have been integrated into the kernel, and then make sure your system is using that kernel version or later. It's usually older devices whose drivers have been brought into the kernel, you won't find newer stuff that just works out of the box.

If you don't want to limit yourself to the ones with kernel drivers you'll usually be downloading the driver's source code from somewhere, then set up dkms to build and install them on every kernel update.

It's honestly not as bad as it sounds if you don't mind researching for a bit and running a couple commands.

Good luck

[–] Rustmilian@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Using my knowledge of the Linux Kernel, I was about to locate the page. RTL8852CE's driver is rtw8852ce located in the Rtw89 driver family subset.

[–] sic_semper_tyrannis@lemmy.today 1 points 6 months ago

Thank you! This is very helpful! Do you know if it's fairly easy to add on an immutable distro (Bazzite)?

[–] Rustmilian@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

The kernel driver for the RTL8852CE wireless card is driver rtw8852ce. This means that the driver is mainline, so it should work out of the box. Going to the git log for this particular driver, we can see it's initial work was as added back in 2022-03-10, therefore it's safe to assume that any Kernel released after that point will work. However, seeing that the latest fix was made in 2024-02-01, I highly recommend using any kernel after that date for the best experience. That said, go to releases and take a look at the chart; according to the chart and the previous information, you should be good with any Linux Kernel 6.1+. Heading back to the main page, the drivers you should be looking at are LTS (longterm) 6.1.87 and above, while I recommend stable 6.8.7+ for the lastest patches made to this driver.

I recommend using hw-probe and running :

sudo -E hw-probe -all -upload -max -check-extended -dump-acpi -decode-acpi 

For a full and complete probe of the system.