I upgraded my ancient HP 530 laptop from Mint 16 to Mint 18 yesterday. I downloaded the ISO and did a clean install. The wifi (Broadcom) did not function as usual so I installed the recommended drivers - no joy! I spent 3 hours playing with different drivers to no avail - it still does not function - the first Mint distro ever not to work!
I Tried my TP-Link wifi dongle as a last resort. Surprise, it worked - but kept losing connection every 5-8 minutes and had a weak signal. However, I fount this:
https://github.com/pvaret/rtl8192cu-...16df/README.md
BRILLIANT!! Used it on my Mint 17 Cinnamon PC and it worked on that too. Not only has it stopped the dropped connection issue but the signal strength is 5 bar now - up from 1-2 bars.
Can't recommend this too highly!
Compatibility:
These devices are known to work with this driver:
ASUSTek USB-N13 rev. B1 (0b05:17ab)
Belkin N300
Edimax EW-7811Un (7392:7811)
TP-Link TL-WN822N (0bda:8178)
TP-Link TL-WN823N
TRENDnet TEW-648UBM N150
These devices are known not to be supported:
Alfa AWUS036NHR
TP-Link WN8200ND
As a rule of thumb, this driver generally works with devices that use the RTL8192CU chipset, and some devices that use the RTL8188CUS, RTL8188CE-VAU and RTL8188RU chipsets too, though it's more hit and miss.
Devices that use dual antennas are known not to work well. This appears to be an issue in the upstream Realtek driver.
Installation:
Ensure you have the necessary prerequisites installed:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install git linux-headers-generic build-essential dkms
Clone this repository:
git clone
https://github.com/pvaret/rtl8192cu-fixes.git
Set it up as a DKMS module:
sudo dkms add ./rtl8192cu-fixes
Build and install it:
sudo dkms install 8192cu/1.10
Refresh the module list:
sudo depmod -a
Ensure the native (and broken) kernel driver is blacklisted:
sudo cp ./rtl8192cu-fixes/blacklist-native-rtl8192.conf /etc/modprobe.d/
And reboot. You're done.
Thanks
