Edimax AC1200 MU-MIMO USB2.0 Adapter (rtl8812bu)

serendrewpity · February 20, 2017 at 11:51 PM

I am currently running LibreElec 7.0.3 and Kodi 16.x on Raspberry Pi 3. I have 3 units. I just recently purchased three Edimax AC1200 MU-MIMO USB2.0 WiFi Adapters.

My inquiry at base is to know if support currently exist for (or if plans to support are in the works for) the Edimax AC1200 MU-MIMO USB2.0 WiFi Adapter (chipset: RTL8812BU)

As best as I can tell from my reading and poking around the chipset RTL8812AU is supported from LibreElec 7.95.06 onward. Of course this includes Kodi Krypton which may break my builds and add-ons.

I've found a couple of links below that suggest a manual way of introducing support for a new WiFi dongle. Is it possible to use some similar method to provide support for this adapter on LibreElec 7.0.3? Or any version for that matter?

I will continue to search and research for a solution but perhaps someone with knowledge can let me know if my efforts may bare fruit or if I should go ahead and return to retailer for a refund and exchange for a more compatible [and slower] Wifi adapter which is my current plan.

How to add WIFI dongle (Netgear WNA1000M)?
Edimax EW-7811UTC wifi dongle support RPi3?

To approach from a completely different angle,... Are there any 802.11AC WiFi adapters out there that support AC1200 and are already compatible with LibreElec 7.0.3?

Thanks in advance for any advice or help.

iainmacleod · September 17, 2017 at 3:31 AM

I also would love to see support for this chipset. The hardware is solid and would significantly help my connection issues.

Is there anything I can do to log this with developers? Is there a feature request link or similar?

Thanks in advance.

**chewitt** · September 17, 2017 at 8:04 AM Official Post

We aren't fans of realtek drivers that sit outside the kernel because they are usually poor quality and problematic to maintain. It's probably not hard to build the driver, but it's debatable whether we really want more realtek crap in our builds.

**milhouse** · September 18, 2017 at 9:06 AM

I would suggest you both contact Realtek and urge them to get their drivers added to the mainline kernel. I want to see less out-of-tree Realtek drivers in LibreELEC (ideally: none) and not more, as they're an absolute nightmare to support, so I don't think the RTL8812BU will be supported any time soon I'm afraid.

Realtek really do need to get their sh*t together and stop releasing hardware without in-tree kernel support and then leaving it up to the open source community to bail them out by providing drivers of variable quality.

It's unfortunate that you've already bought the Realtek hardware, with luck maybe you can get a refund and purchase hardware from a vendor (Intel, Broadcom) that has done the right thing and pushed their driver upstream.

iainmacleod · September 27, 2017 at 6:57 PM

I posted something to Edimax to see if they could push Realtek directly.

iainmacleod · October 5, 2017 at 2:44 PM

And here is the results:

Ticket: https://edimax.freshdesk.com/helpdesk/tickets/6118web site

I checked our web site Aug22 for kernel 2.6.18 ~ 4.8

If you have a newer kernel than 4.8, you may try below instruction which is to use EW-7822ULC in Raspbian Jessie.

How to install EW-7822ULC adapter on Raspberry Pi

**milhouse** · October 5, 2017 at 3:41 PM

Yeah.... unfortunately Edimax have sold you the hardware and now told you to fix it yourself.

Ultimately this is a Realtek issue, but Edimax hiding behind a "fix it yourself" argument isn't helping you as the consumer, and it doesn't help Edimax either in the long term.

What Realtek must do (and Edimax need to be telling Realtek this, too) is push their driver to the main kernel tree. See this post explaining the benefits *for everyone* when drivers are maintained in the kernel tree.

Many Realtek drivers now resemble abandonware as they no longer receive updates from Realtek and are now supported with varying degrees of success by the open source community, usually only to allow them to build with the latest kernels. The driver Edimax pointed you to is no different as it will not build with kernels newer than 4.11.0 - the fixes are available but being ignored which is a classic example of another abandoned driver. Note that the 4.11.y kernel is already obsolete and end of line, so it's not unreasonable to want a driver that builds with the most recent mainline kernel which is 4.13.y (and used by LibreELEC).

Obviously if the driver had been pushed to the main kernel tree then it would now be maintained "for free" and we wouldn't have these issues, or even this conversation.

So yeah, unfortunately we will not be adding yet another out-of-tree (and most likely already abandoned) Realtek driver into LibreELEC. It really is time Realtek pulled their finger out and did things right. I know this doesn't help you, but long term this is the only sane option.