Having trouble setting up wifi on new system?

Hi! First of all I’d like to say in advance that I’m sorry if this is a silly or obvious question - I’ve never seriously used a linux system before so maybe there’s just something obvious I’m not getting. That being said: I recently decided to try out manjaro after only ever really using windows, but before even installing it, I noticed that the system running off my live usb wasn’t able to connect to the internet? I’m guessing it’s a hardware issue - I don’t have a wired connection and the only way my computer has to access wifi is through a usb dongle I bought off amazon a few years back, so maybe there are some drivers that I’d need to get or something?
Assuming the issue is drivers and not something else, I have 2 questions: 1. how can I find the correct driver for my device? and 2. how can I actually get the driver onto the device and installed without an internet connection? (and I guess as a sub-question of 2, is it even possible to install drivers on a live usb or will I need to properly install manjaro first?)
I dug through my amazon history so I could link to the exact dongle I have, but apparently since I’m a new user I can’t post links? I guess I’ll just say that it’s called “BrosTrend 1200Mbps USB WiFi Network Adapter” and the last part of the url (which I think is the important bit?) is /B01BV91L7Y

Thanks in advance for any help or advice you have!

Start the live system from the USB, and then post the output of inxi -Nazy, and lsusb, that way we can determine the suitable driver for the device.

Okay! So I couldn’t copy & past the results directly because of the lack of internet, but I did take a photo with my phone! (edit: looks like I can’t upload media so I’ll try to retype the important bits)
result of inxi -Nazy

Network:
  Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet
  vendor: ASUSTeK driver: r8169 v: kernel prot f000 bus ID: 04:00.0
  chip ID: 10ec:8168
  Device-2: Realtek RTL8812AU 802.11a/b/g/n/ac 2T2R DB WLAN Adapter type: USB
  driver: usb-network bus ID: 1-2:2 chip ID: 0bda:8812 serial: <filter>

I don’t think I need to copy every single result of lsusb so here’s the one that I think corresponds to my device? I can do more if that’s not right

Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0bda:8812 Realtek Semicondoctor Corp. RTL8812AU 802.11a/b/g/n/ac 2T2R DB WLAN Adapter

Looking at this, I think what I need is a driver for the RTL8812AU? Is that right? I do see some results when I google it so at least I know it’s not a totally meaningless string :sweat_smile:
So if that’s right, how would I get the drivers for it onto my computer without an internet connection? Or am I going to have to invest in a really long ethernet cable :smile:

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There are a couple options in the AUR, you could try them and see which one works best. You need to first install other packages:

sudo pacman -Syu base-devel linuxZZ-headers

where ZZ is your kernel version (e.g. 5.4 -> 54).

Then you can run (e.g.)

pamac build rtl8812au-dkms-git

to install the selected package.


Connect an Android or iOS device via USB and turn on tethering, that should work without much hassle.

Thank you so much for the help, this got it working! The one thing I’d mention in case anyone else reading this is a beginner like me is that when I entered the first command (sudo pacman etc.) it prompted me for which items to install (is that the right word to use?) and I just went with the default option of installing all.

This was actually a little bit of a problem because when I googled it it looked like there were also drivers required to tether to an iphone (which is what I have), but thankfully it turned out that I actually was somehow able to get access to a really long ethernet cord :sweat_smile:

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