OK, in another post, someone was looking for recommendations on the above.
I finally got the usb wifi dongle, that I ordered. It is a wifi category AC 1200 (chip is a Realtec RTL8812au ) and is usb 2 and 3 compatible. It was stated to work under Linux.
https://www.ebay.ca/itm/1200Mbps-802-11AC-USB-Dual-Band-2-4G-5GHz-Wireless-WIFI-Network-Adapter-Q8X1/401478186783?hash=item5d79f6f71f:g:ZCAAAOSwW9RaXvTi
Well, it certainly is not discoverable by the Linux Distros Mint 17 or 18, Pepperrmint or Lubuntu 1804 Beta.
I was able to, under Mint 18, to go into the Driver Manager window and it downloaded the RTL driver, from the Ubuntu repositories.
However my Mint 18, on my HP notebook, only saw the built in wifi card and could not find the usb wifi dongle.
I still have a few more tries to make with this usb wifi dongle.
At this point however, I would not recommend this usb wifi dongle, for use under Linux, because Linux does not yet appear to automatically, find the dongle.
There is a mini CDRom that comes with it, that has drivers for Windows and Linux. The Windows driver works well.
I haven't tried the Linux Shell script, that is suppose to get it to work under Linux
SOLVED!!! See reply #21
I suspect that the reason is that you're using a distro with a relatively old kernel. I'm guessing that any distro running 4.15 will find it.
On my Acer Aspire 1430, Mint 17, I have kernel 4.4.0.116
For fun, try the latest image of Ubuntu 18.04. It is running kernel 4.15. Same with openSUSE Tumbleweed.
Thanks Mike, for the suggestion of trying Ubuntu 18.04 Beta.
Unfortunately, I still can't get this wifi adapter to work, with Ubuntu 18.04
As with the Mint 18 Distro, I can go to the Driver Manager and it does pick up this usb wifi dongle, as well as the built in Broadcom wifi.
I suspect the Distro is latching onto the built in wifi first and I don't seem to be able to have a way to select the usb wifi.
I will remove the built in wifi card and see what happens.
I suspect I will need to have a wired network connection, so that the Live Ubuntu can access the internet to grab the Realtec driver for the usb wifi. Sigh!! Not a workable situation, for me.
I may shortly have a usb AC wifi dongle for sale! :-(
Something strange there, Bill. A Ubuntu installer shouldn't pick up a Broadcom wifi until that driver is installed. Bring your stuff to PLUG MUG tonight; maybe I can help.
OK, I removed the built in Broadcom wifi card from my notebook computer running Mint 17.3
However, I still could not get the computer to talk to the usb wifi adapter dongle.
I next booted up a Live Kubuntu 18.04 Beta from a usb pendrive.
Still could not get the computer to talk to the usb wifi adapter.
I was able to use the Driver Manager to load up the RTL driver from the Ubuntu repositories.
I finally copied the Linux files from the mini cdrom, that came with the wifi adapter.
There is a script by the name of, install.sh which is suppose to make/install the driver.
I had to make the install.sh file an executable file and then I ran the script.
There was no indication that anything had happened after running the script.
However, when I checked for wifi connections, I found that I now had my wifi AC connection showing. Yeah!!!
This is running from a Live usb Kubuntu 18.04. So now I will try and get the wifi adapter, working on the Mint 17.3 that is installed on the hard drive of this computer.
Interesting. Glad it worked!
Bill, did you run the script from a terminal program? Or did you just run it from your file manager?
I was surprised you needed the driver CD-ROM if it was picked up already in Driver Manager. I'm also wondering if you did that before you removed the internal card if it would have worked. Also, many notebooks have a key function that can disable the internal wireless and/or do it from Network Manager tray icon.
In any case, good job on getting it to work.
I think I probably did it both ways. There didn't seem to be anything after each attempt, to say the operation was completed
Quote from: Jason Wallwork on March 13, 2018, 08:23:46 PM
Bill, did you run the script from a terminal program? Or did you just run it from your file manager?
I believe I did initially try, with the built in wifi card, installed.
That didn't work, so that is why I resorted to removing the built in wifi card.
I was surprised you needed the driver CD-ROM if it was picked up already in Driver Manager. I'm also wondering if you did that before you removed the internal card if it would have worked. Also, many notebooks have a key function that can disable the internal wireless and/or do it from Network Manager tray icon.
In any case, good job on getting it to work.
I have not been successful in gettting this usb RTL wifi adapter, dongle, to work with Mint 17.3
The Device Manager does not find any RTL driver, when it scans the Ubuntu repositories.
I know that in Mint 18.3, the Device Manager will find the RTL driver in the Ubuntu repositories and give me the option of selecting to use the driver.
So, I am going to attempt an upgrade from Mint 17.3 to Mint 18, on this Acer Aspire 1430 notebook computer There are lots of good guides, on how to do this.
You might get away with just upgrading the kernel (using Update Manager) though I don't remember if it offered this option in LM 17.x. If it's there, you can find it by clicking on the View menu in Update Manager and then choose Linux Kernels and pick a series that is used in LM 18.x - which I think is the 4.8.x series. Just pick the most recent version 4.8.0-58, I think. It's a good idea to do an image backup before you install the newer kernel, just in case. Then install it and reboot. This may not work but if you want to upgrade to 18, you'll need to do this, anyway and might save you having to do all of that.
Thanks Jason! It is worth a try.
Mint 17.3 kernal only goes up to 4.4.0.98, but I will give it a try.
No luck getting the RTL wifi driver, under Mint 17.3
I installed the latest driver, 4.4.0.98 Went to Driver Manager and it still did not find the RTL driver.
Next step will be putting Mint 18.3 on this Acer Aspire 1430 notebook computer.
Is there an upgrade path from 17 to 18? Or do you need to do a fresh install?
The fight to get this Realtec 8812au AC usb wifi dongle to work with Linux, continues!
OK, I did a clean install of Mint 18.3 to my Acer Aspire 1430 11" notebook computer.
I tried everything, even going to the very latest kernal, available.
Could not get the wifi working. I could get mint to download the RTL 8812 driver, from the Device Manager, but that was all.
So, I tried a Live usb boot of Kubuntu 18.04 Beta.
I was able to get the wifi to work!
So, I did a fresh install of Kubuntu to the hard drive and I was able to get the wifi to work.
There was 500 Meg of Updates, so I started the Updates. That crapped out, with about 26 updates to go.
I then found my wifi to not be working!
There was no way I could get the wifi working, again.
So Kubuntu 18.04 is coming off this notebook computer.
I might give Mint 18.3 another try. Sigh!!!
Silly question perhaps, but is the RTL 8812 driver the correct one? Might I suggest that you boot up again with the Kubuntu beta live usb that worked and use the terminal command inxi -Nx to find out what driver it used.
Quote from: ssfc72 on March 16, 2018, 10:15:49 PM
I could get mint to download the RTL 8812 driver, from the Device Manager, but that was all.
Does that mean you did download it in Device Manager or didn't? Not sure from the context.
Yes, the Device Manager did download the RTL driver.
In Mint 18.3 however, it apparently still can't see the usb wifi adapter and find any networks.
In Lubuntu 18.04 Beta, the usb wifi was found, after the Device Manager downloaded the RTL driver and it found the 5 GHz network of my router and worked well.
Until I did the standard Updates to Ubuntu. Then it lost the wifi connection and I was unable to restore the usb wifi, no matter what I tried.
Very strange. I assume you already tried the Linux driver on the CD?
Yes, I did try the Linux CD driver and it doesn't work. :-(
Quote from: Jason Wallwork on March 18, 2018, 01:26:25 PM
Very strange. I assume you already tried the Linux driver on the CD?
SOLVED!! Realtek usb wifi dongle, RTL8812AU now working on Mint 18.3, on the 5GHz, wifi AC Band.
Found the solution at this site, https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=191361 from poster, AlbertP
Got the driver from this site, https://github.com/abperiasamy/rtl8812AU_8821AU_linux
Note - I went into the Mint Kernel Updates and installed the very latest kernel. 4.13.0-37
This kernel version may not be necessary. I only installed it, because at first, the wifi didn't work and so I went to the latest kernel, but this didn't help either.
It was installing the above driver, that fixed the problem of no wifi.
Bill
Update April 19, 2018 - Today I had an issue with this wifi dongle. :-(
I kept losing the wifi connection and then when I tried to reconnect, there were basicly no wifi sources listed, including mine own, that I could connect too.
I had to reboot the computer to get the wifi working again, only to have it lose all wifi connections again, after only a few minutes use of the wifi.
Turns out the issue appears to be that when Mint 18 did an update, it put the Ubuntu driver for this Realtec usb wifi dongle, back onto my system ( I had previously gone into the Driver Mangager and un-selected this driver because it did not work for this particular Realtec usb wifi dongle.
So, I just, again, went into the Driver Mangager and un-selected the Ubuntu Realtec driver, rebooted and the wifi is working perfectly aagin with the Realtec driver that I downloaded myself, as noted in my previous post above.
Good to hear, Bill. Funny that your solution would be my problem. I'm running Mint 18.3 on my late 2015 iMac with the default kernel, 4.8 as I recall. I have tried upgrading the kernel to the version of 4.13 offered by Mint Update. Booting from that gives me a blank screen. Go figure!
Thanks for sharing, Bill! Glad you figured it out. Good work!
Today, I had an issue with this Realtec usb wifi dongle, on my Acer 11", model 1430 notebook computer.
I have updated my previous post above, with the problem I had, and what I did to get the wifi adapter to work properly, again.
Thanks for sharing, Bill. I haven't tried it myself but after doing a system backup, you could use these steps to blacklist the driver that LM keeps trying to install and load:
https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-blacklist-a-module-on-ubuntu-debian-linux
It won't prevent the driver from being downloaded but will prevent it from starting.