How to find if a chipset is supported?

Support
1

Hi there,

I’d like to buy a WiFi adapter, but I’d like to be sure it will work with the drivers in the repo instead of looking around for drivers to compile and so on.

Looking online gives too much information, most of them not even related to what I’m looking for.

I was thinking to use pacman to query the database description to find the chipset, but apparently, it didn’t work.

For example, I have a USB adapter, which is using the chipset RTL8192EU, running the command pacman -Ss RTL8192EU is not returning anything. Perhaps looking at the dmesg output, I can see the rtl8xxxu: Loading firmware rtlwifi/rtl8192eu_nic.bin which driver is loaded, and searching for the file, I’m able to find the package pacman -F rtl8192eu_nic.bin, but not the other way around.

Any suggestion on how can I verify if a chipset driver is in the repos?

Thanks in advance

2

Usually the kernel handles all the hardware it can. On some occasions a separate driver is needed – although it’s quite common for GPUs.

Regarding support, i’d look at that troubleshooting section: if a not-brand-new device is not listed there, it is probably a breeze to use. If it listed there, the fix/workaround listed should hint at how much trouble it is.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Network_configuration/Wireless#Troubleshooting_drivers_and_firmware

2 Likes
3

It’s in the AUR as rtl8192eu.

4