Hi, everyone!
I am interested in Linux, but wasn’t able to use it on my system, because of the lack of wifi drivers. Now here’s my question: Are there any Linux distros, that support wifi out of the box?
it all depends on your hardware, some will work out of the box but others you will have to install them yourself (probably on ethernet or mobile tethering)
You should have a look at this app A tool to probe for hardware, check operability and find drivers with the help of Linux hardware database
Otherwise MXLinux should find the driver.
In worst case you could buy a wifi extender with ethernet output. Bonus is you dont have to install the proprietary driver ;)
Everything sounds nice, but I guess, due to driver compatibility and bc im a student, that needs to use Windows, i’ll stick to it. Anyway, thanks for helping! :)
due to driver compatibility and bc im a student
I am also a student, a vocational training one (post-high school and pre-university). The “driver compatibity” -> hardware compatibility use to be better in these systems.
My system setup:
CPU: Core i5-10400U GPU: Nvidia GTX 1650 RAM: 16 GB Storage: 1 TB It is a desktop btw.
The wifi is on the mainboard or a seperate addon card? In general “Killer” gaming network equippment seems to have issues under Linux. Most other wifi cards, especially those with intel and realtek chipsets usually work out of the box.
What Linux distribution did you try?
I tried a few… Ubuntu, LM, Solus, everywhere was the same error. Is there a way to find out the driver in the live Linux USB?
Can’t you just check in your current OS (assuming it is Windows) what the network card is? Worse comes to worst you can get a cheap USB wifi card or something like that.
Do you have Ethernet access?
Simplified speaking there is no such thing as a driver in the Linux world. It either works or it doesn’t. Try to figure out what the wifi hardware in your PC is, otherwise we can’t really help you.
Yo. Who sells you your crack? I want some. Of course there’s drivers in Linux.
Simplified speaking ofc. rolls eyes
How is that simplified at all? Sometimes you need to download drivers.
in 90% (other than Nvidia GPU) not, and certainly not in the way Windows users are used to it. For beginners it is better to only use the hardware that is supported by the kernel itself.
Unfortunately without knowing what your wifi card is, we can’t really help there. An easy way to know if it works is to try a live-USB of any distro you like. If it works, you know that once installed it should work too. Otherwise you would have to dig a little probably.
The driver is an Realtek RTL8821 CE
Apparently the driver for this card was about to be included in the kernel last year, but I don’t know if it is now. You might have more luck with rolling-release distros, or at least very up to date ones like Fedora.
Indeed that chipset seems to be problematic. There is a complicated way to get it working, but you are probably better off waiting a bit for the Linux kernel level support to stabilize. Apparently it is included in version 5.9 but buggy. Maybe it works in 5.10 now.
If you want to try now, you best bet is to install Manjaro, connect it to a cable ethernet to update the Kernel to 5.10 and reboot to check if the wifi works then.
Please, open terminal in live OS, do “lspci” and send the output. It is faster doing that to identify your wireless card. That setup information you gave has nothing to do with it.
