Will/Does Haiku Support Realtek Wi-Fi Drivers?

TrueOS is the desktop version of FreeBSD, however it doesn’t have a live version as they don’t have a stable layered filesystem for it to work on. https://download.trueos.org/master/amd64/

Also TrueOS follows FreeBSD-Current so will have the latest drivers.

I tried that too, but I stopped for that very reason lol. I am not particularly comfortable installing an entire operating system on my computer before I even have the chance to try it.

BTW should I use Etcher with Haiku?. I used Rufus to flash the image onto my USB, but when I booted it up it stopped halfway and said I was missing the boot medium or something like that. Very strange.

That’s a bit silly.

Usually when it says that it means you have used a USB3 port… or there is some other hardware issue.

How is it silly?, I don’t want to overwrite my entire operating system or dual-boot it on my minuscule C-Drive. So I cannot live boot Haiku when the USB is inserted into a USB 3.0 slot?, that is strange.

Our XHCI (USB3) bus driver is not very mature and only works with extremely spec-compliant hardware, which seems to be just Intel for the most part. So, yes, you cannot boot very easily from USB3 ports on many machines at the moment…

I see, that is very unfortunate then. I suppose I will wait until it’s supported and stick with Windows 10 until it is.

Maybe by then FreeBSD 12 drivers will be merged as well?, I am excited to see.

Well… you haven’t really even told us anything about your PC other than the wifi card.

Does your PC support turning off XHCI/USB3 in the BIOS , or does it have a USB 2.0 only port somewhere, in which case you can probably get it to work.

I’m not sure at the moment. I do have USB 2.0 ports at the back of my PC, but none of them function at all. I suppose waiting is the only option here, I have done enough tinkering with Linux distros to the point where I am quite frankly sick of it lol.

I prefer an OS that functions entirely on startup, ‘then’ allows me to explore it’s many options and intricacies. That is what I hope Haiku will be for me in the near future.

Not sure how that is possible? Is it an addin card or the ports from the motherboard are broken?

For your definition of “function” if you are tired of trying out live Linux distros you may soon tire of Haiku… perhaps you should move on to more advanced use cases and gain a bit of depth to your knowledge. FreeBSD is fully functional when booted live from many perspectives. You may want to take an online class in application development for instance… the obvious course of action when you get bored with your PC is to make it more interesting in some way, and developing your own applications is an excellent way to do that. C# and VB.net are a good place to start. If you want to learn about developing Haiku applications you can start here: Learning to Program with Haiku | Haiku Project

You misunderstand, I tire of trying to get my Wi-Fi to function coupled with all the terminal shenanigans I had to go through to no avail. I’m less of the PC-tinkerer type and more of a FOSS supporter that prefers a working OS first lol.

I want an equivalent to the ease-of-use Windows currently offers with it’s broad range of compatibility, and perhaps eventually dig into the juicer parts of Linux/BSD if I decide to do so in the future. Whatever isn’t Microsoft or Google I’m a-ok with at this point, these data harvesting companies need to be put in their place.

I have also tried FreeBSD 12 Beta 2, TrueOS and GhostBSD and none of them were successful it seems. It seems a rather difficult process to install a desktop onto FreeBSD, and TrueOS was not able to be live booted. GhostBSD worked fine, but as usual it lacked an internet connection like all the Linux distros I tried before.

My Wi-Fi Adapter specifically is the ASUS PCE-N15 11n Wireless LAN PCI-E Card, would that work on Haiku now or perhaps in the near future?.

rtl8192ce is the chip used in that card, any driver written for it is likely to always be inferior to better documented hardware… go buy a supported card and I suggest you quit expecting support for a card that is impossible to support perfectly to just show up. That’s just the plain facts on the matter.

Intel and Atheros cards are a good bet search the Haiku bug tracker also… to get an idea of what works/what doesn’t. If it works in Haiku it probably works everywhere.

The card should work to some degree in just about every open source OS… as it has existing drivers but if you can’t even get it work in Linux/FreeBSD then just get some compatible hardware. There are working wifi drivers for Haiku, and installing wifi cards is one of the easiest modifications you can do on a PC pop open the case, unscrew the PCIE cover throw it away (or replace the wifi card you have in there that doesn’t work), pop in the card, and screw the IO plate mount on…and move on from this issue.

It sound like to me you have wasted at least several hours bothering with this wifi card that according to you doesn’t work at all it sounds like except perhaps in windows… how much is your time worth?

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So I’m back to square one then lol. I have purchased other Wi-Fi Adapters on two occassions last week and none of them were worth the cardboard they were shipped in. The first one was an Intel Mini PCI-E card that didn’t even fit my AM3+ motherboard (even though I was told it would), and the second was a USB Wi-Fi Adapter from ThinkPenguin which caused my mouse and keyboard to freeze periodically.

At this point I’m just going to cease all further tampering with Linux/BSD and stick with Windows for the next 3-4 years until I can upgrade my PC. It’s a damn shame, but what else can I do?. My time is indeed more valuable then an operating system that refuses to function for me.

Hoping to have support for usb wifi dongles in the future to solve issues with hardware.

I just used a tiny one from China (mediatek chip) for like 4$ with shipment in Ubuntu (kernel loaded its driver, no additional downloads). Would be enough to plug in if it could be supported in Haiku… someday in the future.

Care to explain? Mini pcie is usually for laptops. I have one motherboard that uses an m.2 wifi adapter but that’s uncommon on older boards.

What exact motherboard do you have post a photo etc…if you can’t find the model #

I can’t find the exact model #, and my computer is too packed to get a decent photo of it. But It is an AM3+ motherboard from Gigabyte, and I was assured it would fit on my computer. It in fact, did not.

I don’t believe Intel sells a Wi-Fi Card in anything larger then the Mini PCI-E format, and they don’t sell any in USB form either.

You can get Intel adapters in every format imaginable for any PC made in the last 20 years… Mpci, mpcie, pcie, low profile pcie, m.2 e-key…of it has an expansion slot then we can find an adapter that will fit. What about the model of the PC ?

You just have to figure out the correct part… But I’m not going to risk posting links to parts untill I can see what you have even a manual for this thing would help probably…

The PC isn’t pre-built per-say, but I did go to a local computer shop to have it built using parts they listed on their website. If there are new Intel Wi-Fi chips that aren’t Mini PCI-E exclusive I would love to take a look, as long as it’s compatible with AM3+ there should be no problems whatsoever regardless of how the motherboard is designed.

So it has regular full size pcie slots?

Yes I believe it does. You can link me these products and I’ll ask Intel’s customer service if it supports AM3+ as well.