Yet Another Issue with the infamous RTL8821CE

Question

After hours of testing and retesting, I'm about to give up on installing my RTL8821CE under any flavour of Linux available. I've tested many distros, but the only place where this driver works straight out of the box, is under W10 and W11. I'm using focal with KDE in case this is relevant in any case. Kernel version 5.15.0-46.

I've been reading hundreds of answers around, and I cannot find one that is less useful than the next. None scratch a possible solution to me unfortunatelly.

What I have already tried:

1. First with default Ubuntu driver rtl8821ce-dkms blacklisting rw88_8821ce.
2. Second with default kernel driver rtw88_8821ce blacklisting rtl8821ce
3. Third, with a manually compiled github driver from tomaspinho 8821ce blacklisting both rtl8821ce and rtw88_8821ce

The only relevant message for rtl8821ce:

rtl8821ce: loading out-of-tree module taints kernel.
rtl8821ce: module verification failed: signature and/or required key missing - tainting kernel

With tomaspinho driver 8821ce happens exactly the same

So far, so bad, nothing worked.

I can confirm that when I do lsmod | grep cfg80211 I only see two drivers: wl and the one that is not blacklisted from the above.

What I've done already apart from this?

RTL8821CE driver not working on Ubuntu 22.04

WHY RTL8821CE or WIFI is Removed during Kernel Update on 20.04.4 LTS

• rfkill list doesn't show anything of wireless, only ID 0 for Bluetooth.
• dkms status show the dkms driver in place, example rtl8821ce, 5.5.2.1 5.15.0-46...: installed
• lshw -C network shows the network device, UNCLAIMED

Some extra considerations:

1. Secureboot is OFF
2. I've set pci=noaer for in /etc/default/grub GRUB_CMD_LINE_LINUX_DEFAULT (I've heard that advanced error reporting could couse trouble with this driver)

I don't know what else to do. I think I have tried out all the solutions in the market. I hope I could find someone that could provide some light to this darkness :)

UPDATE 1:

I think I've found some light: forgot to check dmesg specifically on rtw88_8821ce driver and here I find this issues:

rtw_8821ce 0000:01:00.0: enabling device (0000 -> 0003)
rtw_8821ce 0000:01:00.0: Firmware version 24.8.0, H2C version 12
rtw_8821ce 0000:01:00.0: mac power on failed
rtw_8821ce 0000:01:00.0: failed to power on mac
rtw_8821ce 0000:01:00.0: failed to setup chip efuse info
rtw_8821ce 0000:01:00.0: failed to setup chip information
rtw_8821ce: probe of 0000:01:00.0 failed with error -114

In one of the two threads I mentioned above, the solution with almost the same kernel version as mine (5.15.0-42 and mine is 5.15.0-46), they used the rtw88_8821ce to make wireless connection work.

So basically I think that the other two options (rtl8821ce and the very old 8821ce from tomaspinho) will never do the trick.

UPDATE 2:

Now this has opened a new world of opportunities to solve this

First things first, I've found that this chipset is slighty "evolved" compared to old ones (at least firmware-wise). I'm talking about a Realtek 8821CE RFE Type 6 which is not the same as the popular ones I read on this forums.

I'm checking the Linux kernel lists relating to RTW88_8821CE driver, because I have to say that both Launchpad RTL driver and obviously, the super-old tomaspinho driver are never going to work with this new chipset (unless they plan to update).

UPDATE 3:

After a lot of testing which included compiling Linux Kernel 6.0-rc7 and testing multiple drivers we have gotten to the conclusion that the problem can rely on the motherboard. After checking the motherboard specs in Linux, we have found that most fields are "Default" and not set. Like some kind of weird underdog motherboard that has being created specifically for this laptop without any kind of Linux in mind.

I have officially desisted with this laptop, and I will return it to Windows and give it away to some family member. I will probably look into a cheap Chromebook which probably will be 101% compatible with any other Linux distribution, since Chrome OS is basically the dumb member of the Linux family.