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Does the card Asus PCE-AC88 work out of the box on Ubuntu 18.04 ?

There are some informations about its compatibility with Ubuntu, for example here:

Installing Broadcom Wireless Drivers

or there:

https://blog.cooperteam.net/post/2017-11-10-asus-ac88-wifi-on-linux/

but I could not find anything about the status of its compatibility with Ubuntu 18.04.

I would like to know before I buy the card.

Henry
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4 Answers4

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If it helps I can safely say this has been fixed with the latest 5.0 kernel. So all Ubuntu derivatives of 19.04 will work out of the box. I say this posting with Pop!_os 19.04 (and before that I installed Ubuntu 19.04 and Ubuntu Budgie 19.04 and they all work out the box). So pleased this is finally fixed.

Edit: ... and yes it's going at high speeds, can't test on a several hundred Mbps download/upload any more but my current internet is 70 down and 20 up and its maxing out flawlessly.

James Reid
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I just installed that card on Ubuntu 18.04 but it does not work out of the box. Found this related discussion with a documentation how to solve the problem: https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2337200

Certainly not an easy solution to apply. Will try it during the next days.

UPDATE:

Got the card working with the help of this blog entry: https://blog.cooperteam.net/post/2017-11-10-asus-ac88-wifi-on-linux/ It already contains the patched driver for the card ready to download: https://blog.cooperteam.net/brcmfmac4366c-pcie.bin

I moved the file to to my drivers:

sudo mv brcmfmac4366c-pcie.bin /lib/firmware/brcm

Rebooted - works.

UPDATE:

Drivers are so slow (slower than any cheap Wifi card) that I gave up, sold the card, and switched to Powerline.

Wolkenarchitekt
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    It seems from the second link above that the default kernel in Ubuntu 18.04 works fine with the card. I am too going to try in the next few weeks and post the results here. It is a shame though, that the card is still not working out of the box with the latest version of Ubuntu. – Henry Sep 07 '18 at 08:58
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    Got the card working - see my updated answer if you still need help. – Wolkenarchitekt Sep 11 '18 at 11:01
  • Great and thanks for the update. The manipulation seems to be easy with Ubuntu 18.04. Do you obtain a stable and fast wifi connection ? – Henry Sep 12 '18 at 07:36
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    So far no issues - connection is stable and fast. – Wolkenarchitekt Sep 12 '18 at 09:54
  • Can you confirm that you have maximum speed (see Scott Porter's answer) ? – Henry Sep 23 '18 at 11:10
  • Could be true, I was too lazy to do any tests besides just getting it to work. Maybe Asus is interested to get it working if enough people contact their support. – Wolkenarchitekt Sep 23 '18 at 15:42
  • I contacted them, but the answer was: "the card is only supported under Windows". So ASUS was not helpful, and showed a clear disdain for the open source community. Their card was released in 2015, we are end 2018, it should be working under latest Ubuntu version ! – Henry Sep 24 '18 at 08:17
  • FWIW this didn't work for me because some drivers I'd attempted to install before were blacklisting the modded one here. If this solution fails for you try purging the old ones and rebooting:

    sudo apt-get purge bcmwl-kernel-source broadcom-sta-dkms broadcom-sta-common

    The speed however isn't at the card's capability. I get ~1000/1000 on Windows and about ~150/150 on Ubuntu with Gigabit internet.

     – Marogian Dec 03 '18 at 13:44
  • Hijacking post. Its 2019 and the ac88 failed to connect after a update on 18.11. Dont see any packages that obviously would have broken it. Anyone else experience this? – jbu Jan 31 '19 at 03:47
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As James Reid says:

this has been fixed with the latest 5.0 kernel.

Now we have Ubuntu 18.04.3 with 5.0.0-31 kernel. Just run:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y

to get the last kernel version.

Dennis V
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The card "works" under Linux using those drivers linked above, but only at its slowest speed. I used the same PC with Windows and Linux, with this WiFi adapter, and saw download speeds of 388Mbps under Windows from my Virgin Media hub, and just 1.6Mbps under Linux (Ubuntu 18.04). It is not worth using this card with Linux, as you'll get faster speeds from a much cheaper, but better supported chipset currently.

Scott Porter
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  • Can you suggest any chipset that has better support and similar speeds? – Wolkenarchitekt Sep 23 '18 at 15:46
  • It's the fastest 802.11ac adapter. Therefore it's a shame it's not compatible with Linux, as already said. – Henry Oct 06 '18 at 11:23
  • Maybe you could try https://gist.github.com/picchietti/337029cf1946ff9e43b0f57aa75f6556#file-brcmfmac4366c-pcie-txt, step "Install Firmware for Adapter". The author seems to obtain maximum speed. – Henry Oct 20 '18 at 11:29
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    I can confirm that with Ubuntu 20.04 this card is now running at full speed! Running "snap run fast" (to check Netflix bandwidth) this recorded a speed of 369Mb/sec, which is close to the maximum my cable connection can supply! So yeah, if you want the fastest WiFi speed - especially for a media server, or anything else you're using for file transfers, then this is a great option now! – Scott Porter May 26 '20 at 01:52