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I purchased a wireless USB adaptor because my operating system, Kubuntu 18.04, is no longer detecting my wifi card.

When I purchased it, I thought it would be the type of Wifi USB adaptor that you simply need to plug and it works right away, but when I unpacked it I unfortunately realized that it would be a little more complex to get it to work.

I was able to find and download the zip file of the driver for Linux (DWA-181_REVA_DRIVERS_v5.8.7.1_LINUX.zip) on the website of D-Link, but they don't provide any guide for how to install it.

How do I install the driver?

Aaron Hall
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Eric Mather
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3 Answers3

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I dont have this specific wifi module to test it out myself, but just building driver from source should work.

First install dependencies depending on your package manager this can be done on Debian/Ubuntu using apt:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install build-essential

Next unzip the downloaded folder, and unzip the file in there, and there should be a folder called driver with a driver tarball, with the name rtl88x2BU_WiFi_linux_v5.8.7.1_*.tar.gz, decompress in whatever fashion you see fit, I simply right clicked in dolphin and extracted, open the newly decompressed folder and open a terminal to this location.

Now run:

sudo make
sudo make install
sudo modprobe DWA_181

And your local Network Manager should pick up the wireless card from there.

Sayed H Fatimi
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  • Thank you both! I will try every option if necessary. Sayed, I tried the steps you suggested but the last command "sudo modprobe DWA_181" didn't work. I also tried to run the same command with a hyphen (DWA-181) instead of an underscore, but it seems like it made no difference. Both times I got: modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'DWA_181': Operation not permitted Do you have any idea what else I could try? I could mention that I see 5 files with the name DWA-181: They have the extensions ko, mod, mod.c, mod.o, o. – Eric Mather Sep 04 '20 at 14:05
  • @EricMather have you got secure boot enabled? that would be a secure boot related issue, as it locks down the insertion of unsigned drivers into the kernel, you'll have to sign the driver before you can run mod probe or turn off secure boot – Sayed H Fatimi Sep 04 '20 at 16:18
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    You are an absolute lifesaver thank you!!! – Jules Dec 21 '20 at 16:20
  • Glorious. I just found and used this answer again. Had to dig out my S/O password for this new computer to upvote, and found I already had last time. Thanks so much. – GregHNZ Feb 11 '22 at 06:30
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The official driver from D-Link mentioned in the question is here.

However, the latest driver provided by DWA-181_REVA_DRIVERS_v5.8.7.1_LINUX won’t work with newer Linux kernel, you’ll encounter compiler error: No such file or directory net/ipx.h. This is due to a change in the Linux kernel starting from 5.15.

I would recommend two up-to-date repositories for anyone who’d like to compile the driver themselves.

I’ve tested the first one, it works perfectly with D-Link DWA-181 on Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS (GNU/Linux 5.15.0-57-generic x86_64).

Jing Li
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could you please check if its detected in lsusb. These might be helpful but
https://github.com/cilynx/rtl88x2bu https://github.com/cilynx/rtl88x2BU_WiFi_linux_v5.2.4.4_26334.20180126_COEX20171012-5044
There seems to be a similar issue with this adapter for 14.04 answered Install DWA-131 WiFi dongle driver under Ubuntu 14.04.4 so you can try with that solution first and then check the others.

This is the third thing i found that might work

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:hanipouspilot/rtlwifi
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install rtl8192eu-dkms

And if nothing works search for errors regarding the device in /var/log/syslog (less /var/log/syslog | grep error).

Lalo Staykov
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