Will/Does Haiku Support Realtek Wi-Fi Drivers?

I was wondering if the Haiku OS currently supports, or will support, Realtek Wi-Fi drivers?. Specifically I have the ASUS PCE-N15 11n Wireless LAN PCI-E Card, and unfortunately it is one that seems to lack any support on Linux.

I believe it would set Haiku apart more if it supported Wi-Fi cards with this chipset, and it would finally allow me to leave the Windows platform and go entirely FOSS. I understand if this would not be the highest priority in the list of other issues, but I hope it is one that is on the devs’ minds for the future.

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We currently use WiFi drivers from FreeBSD, and with regards to Realtek drivers, the only “documentation” they usually have is the Linux driver. So if Linux does not even support it, we won’t either, almost certainly.

That’s unfortunate. It seems every FOSS OS out there supports every Wi-Fi chipset except mine :frowning:

Can you swap out the Wi-Fi card in your system for one more supported? Intel cards, or Atheros AR93xx/AR94xx are the best supported presently.

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Can USB WiFi dongles be used with haiku? I also have an old MacBook that has now WiFi (will need to check what card it has inside)…

Not yet; I started a branch to work on these and haven’t had time to get back to it. It needs probably another dozen hours or so of work before it would fully work and be merged.

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I tried that, but it had an error where it caused my mouse and keyboard to freeze for periods of time. There aren’t any USB Atheros or Intel Wi-Fi adapters either, I also tried purchasing an Intel PCI-E card but that wouldn’t even fit in my motherboard.

2008’s macbooks have broadcom bcm43xxxx as wifi

This may have been due to a bug that was fixed in last night’s nightly build. Might be worth trying again.

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This is the other adapter I have to be specific: https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/penguin-wireless-n-usb-adapter-gnu-linux-tpe-n150usb

Unless you have a immediate wifi connection you will have to take some drastic measures. Wifi dongles don’t work yet!

If you have an Ethernet connection a cable is the obvious choice…I found an inexpensive pair of powerline adaptors on Ebay @$20AUD and they give me some portabilty in that in that I can connect to any powerpoint in the house for ethernet.
(…even on the deck)

…not wifi but gets the job done at home!

realtekwifi support should get alot better once Haiku upgrades to FreeBSD 12 drivers… they’ve been working on that driver a lot in the FreeBSD 12 release.

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No kidding?, that sounds amazing. Do you have a link that shows they are working on it?. It has been the single biggest issue for me on every Linux distro I’ve tried.

FreeBSD != Linux so no idea why bring up the Linux driver when talking about the FreeBSD driver. It’s not uncommon for there to be a large disparity in functionality between drivers that were developed separately.

This driver which now integrates all realtek wireless devices regardless of bus… Just look at the commit history.

Before it was commited to the tree the work to merge the drivers was done here:

I mentioned it in a general sense, it has been incredibly disappointing thus far not being able to run Linux distros with Wi-Fi enabled. So you are saying that Realtek Wi-Fi driver support has already been merged into Haiku, or FreeBSD in general?.

I have not tried the latest nightly build of Haiku yet as I am still recovering from weeks of trying to get Linux to work on my PC, but if that is the case I would love to attempt a live boot today. I would like my Wi-Fi to work out-of-the-box, with no further tinkering in any terminal.

You could boot up the FreeBSD 12 beta and try it out… Haiku will likely eventually get those drivers someday. It could take a couple releases for it to be worth the effort to import them though it just depends. For instance Haiku had FreeBSD 9 drivers for years and has recently upgraded to FreeBSD 11.2.

If you want something to work soon look into swapping to an already well supported adapter.

Yes, it was added a few months ago. When the FreeBSD team does additional code drops, it gets consumed
into the Haiku ecosystem…

As for your specific Wifi support, the support is there. I didn’t check the firmware but the fundamentals are there. I guess waddlesplash knows more on that.

Thanks, I suppose I will try both FreeBSD 12 Beta 2 and the latest build of Haiku and see if I have any luck. It would be refreshing to experience a FOSS operating system without all the headaches I’ve experienced up to this point.

It is there but it isn’t stable… the version of realtekwifi in FreeBSD 11.2 hadn’t been seeing as much development even the one in 12 I can’t say for sure if it works but it’s worth a shot, as it has seen alot of work on it in the 12 release.

I tried FreeBSD 12 and I was very surprised, it seems to be entirely contained in a command line interface. Unless I did something horribly wrong during the live boot?.

It’s disappointing that I cannot try out FreeBSD 12, but I will try the newest Haiku soon and see if it works with my Wi-Fi adapter.