Realtek RTL8188FU Driver

Note (from kelebek333)

*This repository will may be deprecated when RTL8188FU module will be supported natively on Linux kernel.

https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/linux-wireless/patch/b14f299d-3248-98fe-eee1-ba50d2e76c74@gmail.com/*

About

Unofficial drivers for RTL8188FU (WiFi dongle) for Linux kernel 4.15.x and newer.

It is forked from kelebek333's RTL8188FU repository after it failed to compile on newer versions of Linux (>5.19.2 and >6.0.0).

ARM devices are not supported because I don't have one any.

Disclaimer

I'm not a driver developer. I don't have enough knowledge on how to use or fix these things below:

- RTL8188FU

- Linux driver headers

- DKMS stuff

I'm creating this repository to have patches from kelebek333's original repository.

If you have issues with this driver (I might not fix) or suggest a feature, please contact kelebek for assistance.

Support

No support will be provided for other Linux distributions other than Arch Linux (I'm currently running on) and Debian (including derivatives).

Installation

Install required packages.

Make sure you know or read these packages on your package distribution page because you don't want to trust random people on the Internet...

Arch Linux
```
sudo pacman -S git base-devel linux-headers dkms
```
Debian
```
sudo apt-get install build-essential git dkms linux-headers-$(uname -r)
```
Clone (Like downloading the source code) the repository using git
```
git clone https://github.com/memothelemo/rtl8188fu
```
Add this driver to dkms
```
sudo dkms add ./rtl8188fu
```
Tell DKMS to compile that driver based on this directory we've cloned from git command.
```
sudo dkms build rtl8188fu/1.0
```
Install the driver after it compiles successfully
```
sudo dkms install rtl8188fu/1.0
```

Uninstallation

## Removes rtl8188fu from dkms modules list
sudo dkms remove rtl8188fu/1.0 --all

## Removes RTL8188FU configuration
sudo rm -f /etc/modprobe.d/rtl8188fu.conf

Configuration

My patches

I use RTL188FU and experienced issues upon installing from kelebek's forked driver natively.

I applied some patches in order to make this WiFi dongle work most of the time.

## Please read the contents of ./post-install.sh before running it!
## sudo is not neccessary if you're running on root
sudo bash ./post-install.sh

Disable Power Management

Run following commands for disable power management and plugging/replugging issues.

## Creates modprobe.d in /etc directory where we can keep our configurations in
sudo mkdir -p /etc/modprobe.d

## Creates rtl8188fu.conf file inside modprobe.d folder we created
sudo touch /etc/modprobe.d/rtl8188fu.conf

## Prints the text in the terminal and saves the output we show in terminal using tee
echo "options rtl8188fu rtw_power_mgnt=0 rtw_enusbss=0" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/rtl8188fu.conf

Disable MAC Address Spoofing

Not neccessary if you're not running this on Ubuntu distributions and its derivates

## Creates NetworkManager configuration file
sudo mkdir -p /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d

## Creates disable-random-mac.conf file to know NetworkManager we're
## going to disable MAC Address Spoofing
sudo touch /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/disable-random-mac.conf

## Prints the text in the terminal and saves the output we show in terminal using tee
echo -e "[device]\nwifi.scan-rand-mac-address=no" | sudo tee /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/disable-random-mac.conf

Blacklist for kernel 5.15 and 5.16 (No needed for kernel 5.17 and up)

If you are using kernel 5.15 and 5.16, you must create a configuration file with following commands for preventing to conflict rtl8188fu module with built-in r8188eu module.

echo 'alias usb:v0BDApF179d*dc*dsc*dp*icFFiscFFipFFin* rtl8188fu' | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/r8188eu-blacklist.conf

memothelemo/rtl8188fu