I have recently started experimenting with Linux and have installed Opensuse 13.1 on my main laptop and thanks to the help of people on this forum (especially lwfinger) got its Broadcom 4322 wifi working nicely and I am very happy with it.
So happy in fact that I decided to have a try at installing Opensuse on an old Acer Travelmate 230 that has been in a cupboard for a few years. Starting at the latest Opensuse version and working backwards I have got 10.3 running very well on it, much faster than Win XP.
The only problem is that I can’t get the wifi adapter to function, or even be recognised - it’s a TP-Link WN723N usb adapter and the chipset is Realtek RTL8192cu - and it works fine with the Windows driver. The ethernet connection works well with 10.3 but I would really like to get the wifi working.
I have delved around on this forum and found solutions for this wifi adapter for more up to date versions of Opensuse - it seems that later kernels support the device, or alternatively packages can be downloaded and installed from repositories.
I think I may be in a Catch 22 situation as there are now no functioning repositories for 10.3 but if anyone knows any way I can get this wifi adapter working on 10.3 I would be very grateful.
On 04/23/2014 07:56 AM, Greenpalmer wrote:
>
> Hi there,
>
> I have recently started experimenting with Linux and have installed
> Opensuse 13.1 on my main laptop and thanks to the help of people on this
> forum (especially lwfinger) got its Broadcom 4322 wifi working nicely
> and I am very happy with it.
>
> So happy in fact that I decided to have a try at installing Opensuse on
> an old Acer Travelmate 230 that has been in a cupboard for a few years.
> Starting at the latest Opensuse version and working backwards I have got
> 10.3 running very well on it, much faster than Win XP.
>
> The only problem is that I can’t get the wifi adapter to function, or
> even be recognised - it’s a TP-Link WN723N usb adapter and the chipset
> is Realtek RTL8192cu - and it works fine with the Windows driver. The
> ethernet connection works well with 10.3 but I would really like to get
> the wifi working.
>
> I have delved around on this forum and found solutions for this wifi
> adapter for more up to date versions of Opensuse - it seems that later
> kernels support the device, or alternatively packages can be downloaded
> and installed from repositories.
>
> I think I may be in a Catch 22 situation as there are now no functioning
> repositories for 10.3 but if anyone knows any way I can get this wifi
> adapter working on 10.3 I would be very grateful.
The kernel used in 10.3 is far too old for any modern driver to work. The
backports project used to support 2.6.24 and newer, but that became too great a
task, and they recently stopped support for anything older than 3.0.
If you have a compiler, make, and kernel headers or source installed, then you
can go to Realtek.com and download the source for a driver that will build on
kernels 2.6.18 - 3.9. If your system does not have those features, then you are
out of luck.
Using 10.3, which has not had security holes patched for many years is very
dangerous. I would never expose it to the Internet under any circumstances.
I have tried installing 12.2 again and although the wireless worked the system ran very slowly, as slow as XP which defeats the object of the exercise, and bearing in mind your comments about security as well I guess I’ll look around for an up to date but very lightweight distro.
But you could try to use/install some lightweight desktop (XFCE f.e) on openSUSE as well. No need to switch to a different distro.
For XFCE even a pattern exists (on 13.1 at least), so just enter YaST->Software Management, click on “View”, select “Patterns” and install the “XFCE Desktop Environment” pattern.
Then select XFCE as session on the login screen by pressing on the wrench symbol. If you have Auto-Login activated, just logout to get to the login screen, the XFCE selection should be remembered for the next boot.