Realtek rtl8192e wireless concerns

[apstroth]

Morning,
I have been researching prior to installing the 64 bit version of opensuse, to ensure that it supports the hardware in my laptop.
Toshiba A505D-S6958
AMD Turion-X2 64
ATI Radeon 3100
4GB RAM
Realtek rtl8192e bg+n wireless
I have read of issues with Realtek wireless but wanted to ask if there have been successes in getting it to work with this OS....
I would greatly appreciate your info, suggestions...
Thanks,
Tony ...

[lwfinger]

apstroth wrote:
> Morning,
> I have been researching prior to installing the 64 bit version of
> opensuse, to ensure that it supports the hardware in my laptop.
> Toshiba A505D-S6958
> AMD Turion-X2 64
> ATI Radeon 3100
> 4GB RAM
> Realtek rtl8192e bg+n wireless
> I have read of issues with Realtek wireless but wanted to ask if there
> have been successes in getting it to work with this OS....
> I would greatly appreciate your info, suggestions...

The only Linux driver for the rtl8192 is the vendor-written version
for the rtl8192su. Without seeing the PCI IDs, I don't know if that is
the same as the rtl8192e. In any case, RealTek drivers do not meet
Linux standards, thus the rtl8192su driver is in the "staging"
directory, which means that it will compile and "work", but there are
no guarantees. I don't think it was put there until 2.6.30 or 31, thus
your only option of having that driver built in would be 11.2;
however, there are still lots of serious bugs.

For openSUSE 11.1 you would need to use ndiswrapper with the Windows
driver. With 64-bit, those have been a lot of trouble.

[apstroth]

Afternoon and thank you for the info. Seems to be an issue here and with other well used Linux versions...I tried Ubuntu 9.0.4 on this notebook and it has the same issues..tried with the 64bit drivers for Vista and XP, same results...Oh well, suppose I will just wait...If you tell me how to product the list of "PCI IDs,, I will gladly do that and post here...
questions: will the PCI IDs be the same whether theh list is from Ubuntu or Opensuse? Can I use the Live CD for suse to get the same list if they would be different?
Thanks again,
Tony

[lwfinger]

apstroth wrote:
> Afternoon and thank you for the info. Seems to be an issue here and with
> other well used Linux versions...I tried Ubuntu 9.0.4 on this notebook
> and it has the same issues..tried with the 64bit drivers for Vista and
> XP, same results...Oh well, suppose I will just wait...If you tell me
> how to product the list of "PCI IDs,, I will gladly do that and post
> here...

Drivers are part of the kernel and the essentially the same kernel is
used by all distros - only the version differs and some make local
changes. Drivers are not part of these changes. The difference between
distros is the organization of some of the system files, and some
utilities differ. Yum and zypper are examples.

> questions: will the PCI IDs be the same whether theh list is from
> Ubuntu or Opensuse? Can I use the Live CD for suse to get the same list
> if they would be different?

The PCI IDs come from the device's hardware. You can boot _ANY_ Linux
and get the same answer.

The command is '/sbin/lspci -nnv', at least for openSUSE. I think
Ubuntu puts it in /usr/bin, so a simple 'lspci -nnv' should work. Only
post the first 2 lines of the paragraph that refers to your rtl8192.

[apstroth]

Here it is...
lspci -nn

02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device [10ec:8192] (rev 01)
03:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller [10ec:8136] (rev 02)

Thanks again,
Tony ...

[lwfinger]

apstroth wrote:
> Here it is...
> lspci -nn
>
> 02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
> Device [10ec:8192] (rev 01)
> 03:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
> RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller [10ec:8136] (rev
> 02)

The driver in staging will not work. Upon investigation, it is for a
USB device. You will have to use ndiswrapper.

[apstroth]

Afternoon,

Thank you for the info. Would you happen to know if there is a certain ndis version and driver that has had success? Also, would you know if there is currently any development work to produce a driver for this?

Thanks again,..
Tony ...

[lwfinger]

apstroth wrote:
> Afternoon,
>
> Thank you for the info. Would you happen to know if there is a certain
> ndis version and driver that has had success? Also, would you know if
> there is currently any development work to produce a driver for this?

No to both questions. I have not even checked to see if there is a
vendor-written driver.

In general, the most problems with ndiswrapper have been with 64-bit
drivers. The underlying Windows drivers have not gotten that much
testing. It used to be that Vista drivers did not work with
ndiswrapper. I don't know if that situation has been fixed. I don't do
Windows in any form except for running in a VM for the two
applications that do not run under Wine.

[apstroth]

Thanks for your response. I have not run windows for a long time now, also except for a VM to run a few apps that I require, that also do not run under wine or cross-over.
I was really hoping to be able to get this resolved so that I could continue to use either Opensuse or Ubuntu...
One more question: do you know of a highly recommended , if you would...Is there a recommended USB wireless device that works well with linux? I suppose I can always continue to use Linux if I can get a well accepted USB wireless device..
Thanks again,

Tony ...

[malcolmlewis]

Originally Posted by apstroth

Thanks for your response. I have not run windows for a long time now,
also except for a VM to run a few apps that I require, that also do not
run under wine or cross-over.
I was really hoping to be able to get this resolved so that I could
continue to use either Opensuse or Ubuntu...
One more question: do you know of a highly recommended , if you
would...Is there a recommended USB wireless device that works well with
linux? I suppose I can always continue to use Linux if I can get a well
accepted USB wireless device..
Thanks again,

Tony ...

Hi
The HCL
http://en.opensuse.org/HCL/Network_Adapters_(Wireless)

--
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.1 (i586) Kernel 2.6.27.25-0.1-pae
up 11:12, 3 users, load average: 0.28, 0.24, 0.22
ASUS eeePC 1000HE ATOM N280 1.66GHz | GPU Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME