problems with Realtek RTL8188ee on 14.04

Question

I am having a wireless issue with my mothers laptop, just installed Ubuntu 14.04 because I'm tired of removing malware from her laptop and now the wireless card wont work.

this is the first time I've ever had problem with this and I'm not finding anything for 14.04, the card is the Realtek RTL8188ee, the computer is a Toshiba Satellite C55-A, it works hardwired to my router and with a cheap no name 802.11g dongle I had lying around.

thing is it was connected during the initial installation, but after it rebooted it stopped working and can't figure it out

"wont work" in what way? Does Ubuntu detect it? Doesn't connect to any network? Connects but there isn't active network? — Braiam, May 05 '14 at 12:53
Upgrade kerne i have toshiba c50 and RLT8188, i have solved the problem with upgrade the kernel. — , May 07 '14 at 20:07

score 8 · Answer 1 · edited Oct 31 '14 at 09:51

8

Larry Finger, kernel maintainer, has a github repository with an improved driver. Hopefully it will be merged soon. Until then:

sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-generic git dkms
git clone http://github.com/lwfinger/rtlwifi_new.git
cd /path/to/rtlwifi_new
make
sudo modprobe -rv rtl8188ee
sudo make install
sudo modprobe -v rtl8188ee

If you're doing this over your current wifi connection and the last step fails, reboot and everything should work.

A brief explanation of the above steps as requested:

Use sudo apt-get to install what is nessesary to build the driver.
Use git to clone the github repository. See man git for more info.
Use cd to change directory to wherever you cloned the repository to. You'll need to be in that directory to build it. For example: cd ~/stuff/rtlwifi_new in my case.
Use make to build the driver.
Use sudo modprobe -rv to unload the current driver.
Use sudo make install to install the new driver.
Use sudo modprobe -v to load the new driver.

edited Oct 31 '14 at 09:51

Pabi

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answered Oct 30 '14 at 20:07

jackie

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Can you please explain at least roughly what these commands do? (see How to write good answers) – David Foerster Oct 31 '14 at 02:16
Is the github repo public? Do you have a link? – wordsforthewise May 08 '16 at 06:41
make -j4 where 4 is the number of cores, should speed up the build a bit, right? – wordsforthewise Aug 29 '16 at 13:17
This improved my wifi speed by about 5-10x after installation. Unfortunately, it's still not to par compared with other wifi devices which are about 2x faster. The driver by FreedomBen works for my RTL8188EE, but poorly. – wordsforthewise Aug 29 '16 at 13:19
This fixed the random wifi disconnects in my Asus X550VX laptop with rtl8821ae driver. – Gobinath Feb 27 '17 at 17:20

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 19 '14 at 00:08

Installing the correct drivers worked for me with most wifi networks. One particular network remains intransigent but all others are fine. Try this:

sudo apt-get install --reinstall linux-headers-generic linux-headers-$(uname -r) build-essential dkms git
git clone https://github.com/FreedomBen/rtl8188ce-linux-driver
cd rtl8188ce-linux-driver
sudo make
sudo make install
sudo cp -r firmware/* /lib/firmware

problems with Realtek RTL8188ee on 14.04

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