How to install driver for ReakTek rtl8821ce with NO ETHERNET PORT

Question

I just bought a new HP 15-ef0875ms laptop and am trying to install Xubuntu 18.04.4. The network card is not recognized.

Steps I have taken:

• I downloaded the driver using other answers here.
• I tried to build the driver. make is not installed.
• I tried to install make. I don't have build-essential, gcc, g++, or other installed.
• I tried to install those. Dependency hell ensues. Eventually it tells me I can't install dpkg-dev because of libdpkg-perl version being too new.
• I am lost.

What can I do without any internet access of any kind on the machine itself?

Answer 1

You can always go online on any system having a USB port.

Connect your phone with a USB cable and turn on USB modem mode there.

It is a lot easier for a newbie that to manually install many packages with dependencies.

Answer 2

1. Borrow modern phone and use @Pilot6 user's advice

2. Download all required packages using this method:

   apt-get --simulate install build-essential 2>&1 | grep "^  [a-z0-9]" | sed 's/^T.*$//g;s/ /\n/g' | tee packages.txt
   

   Using packages.txt file you could make a script to automatically download these packages on system with working network adapter through wget.

3. Copying packages from cache on machine with internet:

   • Duplicate installation on PC with network access
   • sudo apt clean && sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade && sudo apt install make gcc build-essential
   • sudo cp /var/cache/apt /your/usbdisk/ on machine with internet
   • cd /your/usbdisk/apt && sudo dpkg -i *.deb

4. Create customized Ubuntu 18.04 distribution enabling required build packages

5. And also, maybe driver could be compiled on the other machine with the same kernel...