I had been using Fedora 41 without any problems. I updated to 42 without any issues. Some days later i installed Fedora 42 again as a clean, fresh installment and suddenly no wifi adapzter is found (the computer is old and only has a wifi dongle from Realtek). I tried other distros and in Linux Mint the wifi is working.
It is a RTL8191SU 802.11n Realtek, driver r8712u.
How can I fix this? And why did it work when I was using the updated Fedora 42, but not when I made a fresh install?
We need more details to understand the issue. Please run the following commands in a terminal and provide the output as pre-formatted text (using the </> button):
inxi -Fzxxjournalctl --no-hostname -g wifi |catThank you for your reply. Which info do you exactly need as I don’t want to post everything here? As I mentioned, the wifi adapter is a Realtek USB:
Realtek RTL8191SU 802.11n WLAN Adapter driver: r8712u type: USB
The inxi -Fzxx output is sanitized so it is suitable for posting. When posted as text others with similar hardware can find this topic. Without the requested journalctl output we don’t know where to start.
You may have been using an older driver that was not “standards compliant”. https://github.com/morrownr/USB-WiFi/blob/main/home/USB_WiFi_Adapter_out-of-kernel_drivers_for_Linux.md has some information about recent changes affecting Realtek drivers.
Okay, so the network part from inxi is
Device-2: Realtek RTL8191SU 802.11n WLAN Adapter driver: r8712u type: USB
rev: 2.0 speed: 480 Mb/s lanes: 1 bus-ID: 3-2:2 chip-ID: 0bda:8172
state: up mac: <filter>
and jornalctl
Jun 04 10:33:11 NetworkManager[1680]: <info> [1758964671.0971] Read config: /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf, /usr/lib/NetworkManager/conf.d/{20-connectivity-fedora.conf,22-wifi-mac-addr.conf,99-nvme-nbft-no-ignore-carrier.conf}, /run/NetworkManager/conf.d/15-carrier-timeout.conf
Jun 04 10:33:11 NetworkManager[1680]: <info> [1648994731.2076] Loaded device plugin: NMWifiFactory (/usr/lib64/NetworkManager/1.52.0-1.fc42/libnm-device-plugin-wifi.so)
This shows the USB WiFi is detected and using an r8712u driver (whose maintainer, lwfinger, died recently). journalctl should also show you more records showing an attempt to associate with the router.
At this point, your best option may be to upgrade to one of the recommended USB WiFi dongles with in-kernel drivers.
That is the full journal that I posted. Since I can only use Fedora Live now on a stick and can’t install it (since I then would have no wifi connection) there are only these entries in the journal.
I am still confused though why it worked when using the upgraded version from 41 to 42, but not when using a clean install of 42. Is 41 still available for download? I would really prefer using Fedora instead of Mint…
Linux modules often require changes to work with newer versions. If an in-kernel driver is no longer maintained, it has to be removed. The list of modules that are configured for each kernel is in /lib/modules/<kernel_version>/config. Look at the section starting with CONFIG_WLAN_VENDOR_REALTEK=y` and you will see entries like:
CONFIG_WLAN_VENDOR_REALTEK=y
CONFIG_RTL8180=m
CONFIG_RTL8187=m
CONFIG_RTL8187_LEDS=y
CONFIG_RTL_CARDS=m
CONFIG_RTL8192CE=m
CONFIG_RTL8192SE=m
CONFIG_RTL8192DE=m
CONFIG_RTL8723AE=m
CONFIG_RTL8723BE=m
CONFIG_RTL8188EE=m
CONFIG_RTL8192EE=m
CONFIG_RTL8821AE=m
# CONFIG_RTL8192CU is not set
CONFIG_RTL8192DU=m
CONFIG_RTLWIFI=m
CONFIG_RTLWIFI_PCI=m
CONFIG_RTLWIFI_USB=m
# CONFIG_RTLWIFI_DEBUG is not set
CONFIG_RTL8192C_COMMON=m
CONFIG_RTL8192D_COMMON=m
CONFIG_RTL8723_COMMON=m
CONFIG_RTLBTCOEXIST=m
CONFIG_RTL8XXXU=m
CONFIG_RTL8XXXU_UNTESTED=y
CONFIG_RTW88=m
Only the modules with =m get built. I suspect that “CONFIG_RTL8192CU is not set” because nobody has done the work to support the current kernel.
Note that many modules support multiple chips. You can see the list of USB chip-ID’s using modinfo. The kernel uses those lists to select the appropriate module based not on the model name, but on the USB chip-ID. In some cases, more than one module supports a given USB-ID, so it may be necessary to blacklist the modules you don’t want the kernel to use.
Thank you, I am not as advanced (yet) as to understand all of that…but regarding 41, ist this that still vailable? I could not find any download on Fedora’s official page. By the way, OpenSuse (at least Tumbleweed) does not work either. So probably only longterm release-distros which I do not want…it probably would not make any difference to use another Fedora spin/Silverblue etc, would it?
Unlikely, and Fedora is an early adopter, so kernel.org changes that affect Fedora will usually appear in other distros.