Infamous RTL8192cu

RTL8192cu is known to cause troubles with wifi for Linux users. The solution is to use original Realtek’s drivers but those are known to have issues with compilation on newer kernel versions (“some warnings being treated as errors” messages). Here is a quick guide how to compile the fixed RTL8192cu for new kernels.

With those instructions I successfully compiled RTL8192cu and got it working under kernel 3.13.02. Commenters and Reddit users reported that they got it working on various 3.x and 4.x kernels as well.

Other problems that this instruction solves:

RTL8192cu Linux 3.1

RTL8192cu Linux 4

compiling RTL8192cu

0df6:0070 drivers

rtl8192cu some warnings being treated as errors

First step

You need to get a few things installed. Those are:

kernel headers

build tools (gcc, make, etc)

dkms

git

You can obtain them by executing following commands:

For Debian/Ubuntu (and other systems equipped with apt tool)

apt-get install --reinstall linux-headers-$(uname -r) linux-headers-generic build-essential dkms git

For Fedora (and other systems equipped with yum tool)

yum install kernel-devel gcc dkms git

For Fedora versions from 23 up, use the following command (thanks to Paul Sand for informing me about that):

dnf install kernel-devel gcc dkms git

Second step

Obtain the fixed drivers:

git clone https://github.com/pvaret/rtl8192cu-fixes.git

If this repository is no longer available, leave me a comment. I will upload my backup of those drivers.

Third step

Build and install a DKMS module. Execute this command without leaving the current directory!

dkms add ./rtl8192cu-fixes && dkms install 8192 cu/ 1.10 && depmod -a

Fourth step

Block the native (and broken) drivers:

cp ./rtl8192cu-fixes/blacklist-native-rtl8192.conf /etc/modprobe.d/

Fifth step

The last step is to execute following command and enjoy your working WLAN!

modprobe 8192cu

Learn more about Linux device drivers