WiFi card is a component you can't really choose. CPU, memory, graphic card and storage, are probably the main reason people buy a laptop, but not a WiFi card. It's just a tiny device you always think and expect to work without problem.
Today, almost any network device work out of the box under Linux kernel. If not, the proprietary firmware can be easily installed. Unfortunately, there are few issues with few WiFi cards in Linux. Realtek is one in the list.
I have a laptop with realtek 8821ce wifi card that always works properly on my Ubuntu machine. There is a package called rtl8821ce-dkms I can install directly from Ubuntu's repository and the wifi will work as it should. Sadly, this package is deprecated in Ubuntu 22.10 repository and doesn't work with Ubuntu 22.04's kernel 5.19 upgrade.
Apparently, there is already a module rtw88_8821ce included in Linux kernel. But this driver doesn't work properly yet. You have to be near your wifi router to be able to get the proper signal. If you move a little further, the signal will become weak and the connection will fail.
Installing rtl8821ce-dkms From PPA
Thankfully, there is a PPA for rtl8821ce-dkms package you can install into your Ubuntu 22.10 or updated 22.04 :
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xalt7x/rtl8821ce-dkms
sudo apt update
sudo apt install rtl8821ce-dkms
Blacklisting Default Driver
After installing the package, you have to make a little next step to make it work as the default wifi driver:
sudo modprobe -r rtw88_8821ce
sudo modprobe rtl8821ce
sudo su
# echo blacklist rtw88_8821ce >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
Reboot the system.
Alternative Installation
There is also an alternative rtl8821ce-dkms package source you can install and should work in any Linux distribution. The detailed information and installation, you can follow in this following page: https://github.com/tomaspinho/rtl8821ce
The Future
Currenly, rtw88_8821ce is the default driver included in Linux mainline kernel. While it still doesn't work properly, we still hope in the future, this driver will work better and we don't have to do extra effort to make realtek 8821ce work properly under Linux kernel.
Comments