Maintenance after Debian Trixie

[MaxG87]

I recently migrated to Debian Trixie (which is still testing). Since then I have the drivers rtw88_8822b and rtw88_8822bu available by the distribution. Therefore, I am no longer dog-footing the driver.

I think, soon the repository will not be required any more. I think it is reasonable to continue maintenance until the release of Debian Trixie. After that, I consider to stop fixing compilation issues.

Are there any thoughts on this? Should a remark on this be added to the README, so others can prepare or ask for longer support?

[cilynx]

Agreed. Readme has been updated with commentary on mainline and a link to this issue for anyone interested to comment.

[S-K-Tiger]

For me when using rtw88_8822bu I found that, when attempting to connect to a network using saved credentials, it would ask for credentials and ask again if provided repeatedly. Installing rtl88x2bu has fixed this issue for me.

System info

Operating System: Kubuntu 24.04
KDE Plasma Version: 5.27.11
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.115.0
Qt Version: 5.15.13
Kernel Version: 6.8.0-31-generic (64-bit)
[...]
System Version: 2.0

Device info

  idVendor           0x2357 TP-Link
  idProduct          0x0115 Archer T4U ver.3
  bcdDevice            2.10
  iManufacturer           1 Realtek
  iProduct                2 802.11ac NIC

[3vi1]

Preface: I have used your driver with Ubuntu and the latest mainline kernels with no problems for years. Thanks so much for maintaining this!

I hope you can continue to maintain this for at least a short while longer. Let me explain:

Since they added rtw88 support in the newer kernels, I've been trying to make that work instead. While that "works" (at first), I'm of the opinion that the drivers in kernel are still suffering from major bugs that make them unsuitable for anything more than testing.

The main problem I experience with the default kernel drivers is that the interface goes down/disappears, usually about 24 hours into use (sometimes less, sometimes more), and the only way to re-establish it is to remove/re-insert the modules. Dmesg points to "Failed to get tx report from firmware" or lps issues (though it happens when the wifi is being actively used). I can expect it to happen anytime my systems been up for a day and I'm doing backups while downloading anything; somehow active USB disk activity seems to be a catalyst for the failures.

Eventually, reloading the drivers won't fix the issue and the system needs an entire reboot to get the wifi working... at which point it's good for maybe another day before it starts showing the same problems again.

I found others online complaining of similar issues. After fighting with it for months and trying everything that other claimed had worked for them (tweaking kernel parameters, turning off wifi powersave, setting lps options on the drivers, etc.) I gave up and tried the lwfinger rtw88 drivers (just slightly newer versions of what's packaged with new kernels, from what I understand). Unfortunately, no change in symptoms when using those.

I even bought a different USB dongle (same chipset) so that I could verify it wasn't a hardware issue. It shows the exact same issue, ruling out hardware.

After retrying all combination of settings, I finally decided to install your drivers again - to verify it really was the kernel drivers and not something else in my ever-changing system configuration. I've now been up for over 3 days without any issue at all using your drivers with kernel 6.10rc4, I have never been able to go more than two full days using the drivers in the newer kernels.

So, again, I'm hoping you continue to keep these compiling with newer kernels until they shake out the issues in the mainlined drivers. I'll continue testing them and report these issues upstream as newer kernels become available, and hopefully they get more feedback as other distros roll with newer kernels.

Thanks for all your hard work. It has been appreciated.