Detailed list of USB WiFi adapters that work well with Linux | Hacker News Reader

Detailed list of USB WiFi adapters that work well with Linux

github.com

77 pointspkkm22 comments

Thank you for this. It's hard to understate how frustrating it is to buy multiple wifi adapters, to struggle to find the correct drivers on a some github repo and to have all of them randomly stop working every six months. I gave up and bought a long ethernet cable.

This problem is one of the main reason I wouldn't recommend having Linux as an OS for a personal PC.

I feel like this used to be a bigger issue, now virtually all motherboards have an M.2 A/E key slot for a wifi card and the Intel ones are pretty bulletproof and dirt cheap, in my experience.

So throw out the one the motherboard comes with and buy one to replace it?

I mean, my experience has been that they tend to come with ones that have good support, but I accept this may be a lack of familiarity with the low end of the market, although given how cheap the Intel ones are, I'd suspect the low end is more likely to just not ship one than ship a bad one.

Most modern low end boards don't have this. And a very big chunk of desktop computers in use nowadays probably fall in the having a low end board category or being old enough for that to not be a feature. (my desktop is in the first category lol)

Fair, although given M.2 is just PCI-E, a quick search on aliexpress shows adapters for under a fiver, might be the best route to a known good option (assuming those adapters aren't problematic themselves, but they should be simple, also assuming most people have a free PCI-E slot these days, outside of ITX boards, but those not having an M.2 for wifi seem unlikely).

i'd say the usb wifi's are for the many smaller form factor motherboards lol. then there's planned obsolescence like what has happened with Dell and Intel parts; wifi industry is literally an oo-new-shiny and drop's the mic on old stuff

It would be better to choose from OpenBSD's list, as that hardware is likely more open. Ralink and Realtek have been described as particularly friendly (if memory serves me).

However, OpenBSD also supports older adapters that Linux has long abandoned, so choose something recent.

https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq6.html#Wireless

I am using a Realtek with Centos, and it's never been a problem.

Edit:

Avoid these - "There are not very many major vendors left. Just a few closed ones (TI ACX100/111, Connexant PrismGT, Broadcom crud)."

https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20050317205152

interesting on the openbsd list.

my nightmare are from some "edimax" which uses realtek under the hood; then realtek stops updating said driver such that I have to watch N number of repos every time there's a kernel update (or months later) => and then end up find yet-another-repo with some latest-n-greatest fixes; kind of sad. Makes me want to say: Go away wifi, and bring my cable back.

Fascinating to hear that, as someone who a) doesn't remember having a serious wifi problem on Linux for probably 15 years and b) has never used a wifi dongle on a non-laptop.

Wifi is a complete non-problem for me. I remember fiddling in 2004 and then using FreeBSD on a non-Lenovo, but that's it for bad experiences.

Literally no snark intended, it's just so far out of the way of what I consider normal usage. (As someone with Linux laptops, Linux servers, Windows workstations, Windows laptops in the house.)

Several of the brcmsmac-using chips have driver code that works "fine" until you push enough traffic through. Race conditions, I assume.

P.S. Never buy Broadcom.

Thanks, now I just need the same but for motherboard connected choosers. Always my fear I'll but a motherboard or PCI card and the WiFi won't working properly.

Are there any newish chipsets/usb adapters that support both monitor and injection mode?

One of the previously recommended ANDDEAR MT7612U adapters do not work on usb3 port 1. For MT7612U, get any other adapter but NOT this one. I don't know why this is a problem but it is. https://github.com/morrownr/USB-WiFi/issues/75

Maybe someone more knowledgeable than me will be able to provide some insight.

Makes me excited to try &nsee how far AP mode can go these days.

After running 802.11n OpenWRT on cheap-ish routers for many years (Netgear WGT634U), I started wanting to just run Debian, and was trying a bunch of different Alfa adapters. Supposedly really good chipsets & most would go into AP mode but some had quite frank limits (realtek would reject clients after the 7th), or reset semi-regularly even with really really well conditioned usb hub power. I spent probably 3 years trying to make it work & accepting some truly forsakenly bad wifi before finally going back & buying a netgear r7800 for AP.

There's a lot more chipsets these days & it might be worth exploring again. The appeal of being able to add passable wifi APs via usb remains alluring to me. And alas the pcie addin market is also not well suited here either... there's only sparse & expensive exotic gear seemingly targetting APs, like Compex cards.

Intel cards in particular will flat out refuse to work in AP mode on the 5GHz band due to a poorly implemented regulatory domain check.

On the other hand, my generic AliExpress Mediatek MT7612U works in AP mode. If I recall, it was passable, but it didn't perform that well compared to my dedicated AP; I think it was the range that wasn't as good (probably had something to do with my antennas). I also didn't test it with a lot of clients.

Intel's Location Aware Regulatory sucks, but:

"when LAR actually works, the real issue isn't LAR, but rather hostapd not scanning before setting up the AP."

"after some trial and error, I was able to get [patched] hostapd to start in the 5GHz band on an Intel [AX210] card with LAR enabled"

https://tildearrow.org/?p=post&month=7&year=2022&item=lar

This is fantastic. I have wasted SO much time trying to choose the right wifi adapter/chipset for projects over the years. Combination of in-kernel-driver status, cost of adapter/chipset, support for Soft-AP, USB-vs-SDIO interface support - all factors need to satisfied.

They only way of figuring it out is to trawl thru the kernel sources (for whichever version is required for the project) and look into the driver defines one-by-one checking for each feature.

I wish they would add a separate list of adapters that support Soft-AP.

I wonder why there is no separate section (or at least a link) for the adapters supporting free drivers and free firmware, FSF-certified: https://ryf.fsf.org/categories/wireless-adapters.

These appear to be dual band 802.11n at best unless I missed one. That’s not good enough these days.

They are far from useless, I'm writing this comment using one (inside Librem 15 laptop designed to run an FSF-endorsed distro).

Some wifi cards I've used in the past have supported only very limited number of clients in host mode. I'd love to be able to see something like "maximum supported hosts".

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