[News] Report on the State of USB WiFi on Linux (July 2025) #633
Description
Hello Everyone,
Great progress continues regarding USB WiFi on Linux.
Realtek WiFi 6/7 chips and drivers:
A Pull Request from rtw-next to wireless-next today indicates the addition of USB support as well as drivers for the rtl8851/33bu and rtl8852/32bu chips will be included in the rtw89 series of drivers in mainline starting with kernel 6.17. This support and the drivers, of course, are Linux Standards Compliant (mac80211). Continued work will add USB3 and LED support as well as drivers for the following chips: rtl8852/32cu, rtl8852/32au and rtl8922/12au. If you want to help test or watch the work, see:
https://github.com/morrownr/rtw89
Even though a lot of work is happening to improve the driver experience with Realtek WiFi 6 and 7 devices, I am not removing the warnings against buying Realtek WiFi 6/7 based USB WiFi adapters for now. The reason is that almost all of the Realtek WiFi 6/7 adapters that are on the market right now are multi-state (windows driver onboard). This can and often does cause problems on Linux systems. I'm going to start collecting information about single-state Realtek WiFi 6/7 adapters so if you have single-state (non windows driver onboard) Realtek WiFi 6/7 adapters, please let me know.
MT7925 USB WiFi adapters:
The first USB WiFi 7 adapter is available. It is the Netgear A9000. I have one and am testing it. I'll be reporting on it soon. Additional adapters that use the mt7925u driver should be available later this year and into next year. Please report any new adapters that you see that use the mt7925 chip.
Realtek WiFi 5:
rtl8814au support finished entering mainline with kernel 6.16. Problem reports for this driver as well as other Realtek WiFi 5 drivers as included in rtw88 can be made at the following repo:
https://github.com/lwfinger/rtw88
Based on the new rtl8812au and rtl8821/11au drivers(added into kernel 6.14), I recently added the following adapters to The Plug and Play List:
2025-06-05 - added ALFA AWUS036ACH to rtl8812au chipset section.
2025-05-12 - added ALFA AWUS036ACS to rtl8821/11au chipset section.
Both of the above adapters are excellent adapters. I consider the ALFA AWUS036ACH to arguably be the best USB WiFi adapter ever built. It has very long range and now that it has a really good standards compliant driver in the kernel, it should be a pleasure for any Linux user to use.
Firmware: Numerous updates to Mediatek firmware files have been released over the last 2-3 months. You can get information about how to check at the following link:
Overall: The State of USB WiFi support on Linux continues to rapidly improve. If you are interested in helping by testing or coding, reply here with the adapter (and chipset) that you use. Ask any questions that you may have. Enjoy.