【Good news】I successfully use five wireless dongles of 4 chips on VisionFive 2

danielktdoranie · March 3, 2023, 1:18pm

No folks, I don’t recommend buying any WiFi dongles with the RTL8832AU chip.

morrownr/USB-WiFi/blob/main/home/USB_WiFi_Adapter_out-of-kernel_drivers_for_Linux.md#chipset---rtl8832au--rtl8852au---ax1800---usb-3

## USB WiFi adapters with Linux `out-of-kernel` drivers

Important: Starting with WiFi 7 drivers, all Linux WiFi drivers must be Linux Standards Compliant (mac80211). The below listed drivers are NOT Linux Standards Compliant so Realtek will not be able to continue using the same type of driver model for WiFi 7. Code has been merged into the Linux kernel to prevent WiFi drivers that are not standards compliant from working. I view this as a very good thing and hope it prompts Realtek to development and maintain standards compliant drivers. I do not have any information about what Realtek intends to do and I am not aware of any product plans that Realtek has for WiFi 7. What I do know is that Mediatek has plans for WiFi 7. In fact, their first WiFi 7 chipset, the mt7925, should be going to manufacturors soon, possibly already. The mt7925 chipset is designed for USB and PCIe use. The in-kernel driver for the mt7925 chipset was merged into kernel 6.7 so keep a watch out for adapters and cards that use the new mt7925 chipset as they will likely be available at some point in 2024. If you need an adapter now, the mt7921au, mt7612u and mt7610u chipsets are used in numerous adapters and are supported by very good in-kernel drivers. See the Plug and Play list for additional details.

The below listing of drivers and chipsets is ranked in order by quality of driver with best at the top.

The best overall Realtek out-of-kernel drivers currently are the 8812au, 88x2bu (8812bu and 8822bu chipsets), and the 8821cu (8811cu and 8821cu chipsets).  These drivers perform reasonably well in all modes that I regularly test. I concentrate my testing on client (managed), master (AP) and P2P modes. There are missing features and this will likely never be fully corrected by Realtek.

My advice, for Linux users needing to buy a new adapter, is to give preference to Mediatek chipset based adapters because the Mediatek drivers are based on Linux Wireless Standards (mac80211) and are maintained in the kernel. This makes the Mediatek based adapters much more trouble-free in the long run.

If you are unable to find an adapter based on Mediatek chipsets, then I recommend adapters based on the following chipsets:  8812bu and 8811cu. I currently recommend you AVOID adapters based on the Realtek 8814au, 8832au and 8852au chipsets as the drivers are not good and I also recommend you AVOID adapters that are multi-state, and multi-function (wifi and bt).

Note: The below sections provide links to drivers and a lot of information. Twelve (12) total chipsets are supported with the listed drivers.

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Recent changes:

- 2024-03-20 - added updated driver for the rtl8812au chipset
- 2023-07-31 - added new driver for the rtl8832bu and rtl8852bu chipsets

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chipset - rtl8832au / rtl8852au - AX1800 - USB 3

No driver is posted for this chipset.

The rtl8852/32au chipset was the first AX class chipset that was available for use in USB WiFi adapters. Unfortunately, Realtek decided to support it with an out-of-kernel driver on Linux instead of doing the right thing and providing a mac80211 technology in-kernel driver. I tested the provided driver (v1.15.0.1). The results were terrible. As many of you know, I have a lot of USB WiFi adapters that I use and test. I cannot recall an experience as bad as this and I have been using USB WiFi adapters for many years. I experienced numerous system lockups that required me to pull the plug to get things going again. Additionally many features are simply not working. Power saving does not work. DFS channels do not work in AP mode. WPA3 did not work in any mode. I saw problems in basic client mode that I cannot explain. The driver is VERY BAD. Avoid adapters based on the 8852/32au chipset.

The Good:

Nothing.

The Bad:

A long list of bad.

The adapter I tested is multi-state and it appears that most adapters that use this chipset are multi-state. Not good.

Recommendation: AVOID adapters based on this chipset. You will be disappointed. The driver is an out-of-kernel driver that is not consistent with Linux Wireless standards and it is a terrible driver. Recommend Linux uders seek out usb wifi adapters that use the mt7921au chipset if seeking an adapter that is WiFi 6 capable.