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I bought a new Lenovo Ideapad 5 Pro that ships with this network card, full name:

Realtek RTL8852AE WiFi 6 802.11ax PCIe Adapter

Ubuntu (or any other linux distribution) does not recognize or provide drivers for this wireless card. Please tell me if there is a viable solution to this problem, or I will have to wait for an unknown amount of time until the driver is provided.

I already searched through askubuntu and found this Network driver for Realtek 8852 20.10

but the guide is very hard for me to understand, they use an unofficial driver from a kind git user, and say that I will need to rebuild it every time my system gets updated. Another big concern for me is, even if I were to do all this, how can I get it installed in the first place? The driver itself requires some packages that I would need to install first, which I cannot do without internet connection. My laptop does not have an ethernet port, only wireless card that does not work. I am desperate to make Linux work on my main machine and I don't want to give up.

SHC MostWanted
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    I understand it looks daunting, but it is pretty easy and we can guide you. Can you tether your phone? Welcome to Ask Ubuntu. – chili555 Dec 07 '21 at 16:03
  • @chili555 Help is greatly appreciated. I found an option on my android phone that says "Ethernet tethering - Share phone's internet connection via USB ethernet." so I assume yes, I can. – SHC MostWanted Dec 07 '21 at 16:11
  • Tip: Make sure your phone is connected to WiFi before connecting the cable and enabling the tethering option so you don't spend your (mobile) data plan. – ChanganAuto Dec 07 '21 at 16:15
  • Please tether your phone and do: sudo apt update && sudo apt -y install git build-essential linux-headers-generic Are there any errors? If not, I will propose a step-by-step answer. – chili555 Dec 07 '21 at 17:28
  • See https://askubuntu.com/questions/425155/my-wireless-wifi-connection-does-not-work-what-information-is-needed-to-diagnos/425180 – waltinator Dec 07 '21 at 18:54
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    @chili555 done! No errors :) – SHC MostWanted Dec 07 '21 at 22:10

2 Answers2

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Now that you have installed the prerequisites successfully by tethering, let's install the driver. It can all be done from the terminal!

git clone https://github.com/lwfinger/rtw89.git
cd rtw89
make
sudo make install
sudo modprobe rtw89pci

Your wireless should now be working.

When Update Manager offers and installs a later kernel version, also known as linux-image, after the requested reboot, you must rebuild the driver:

cd rtw89
make clean
git pull
make
sudo make install
sudo modprobe rtw89pci

Please retain the rtw89pci directory and these instructions for that time.

chili555
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Currently, the simplest and most elegant solution to this problem (and Ethernet issues for some other Lenovo models, like the P14s Gen2) if you are running 20.04 seems to be: sudo apt install linux-oem-20.04d

pzegadlo
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