Ubuntu – How to compile Realtek 8188CE wireless driver on Ubuntu 13.04

driversrealtekwireless

I'm on a Toshiba Satellite C660_EL trying to install the Realtek 8188CE driver.

lspci -v
Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8188CE 802.11b/g/n WiFi Adapter (rev 01)

However, I can't get the driver from there to compile (I've installed build-essentials already). Running make (with or without sudo makes no difference) I get

make -C /lib/modules/3.8.0-19-generic/build M=/root/rtl_driver modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-3.8.0-19-generic'
  CC [M]  /root/rtl_driver/base.o
In file included from /root/rtl_driver/base.c:39:0:
/root/rtl_driver/pci.h:247:15: error: expected ‘=’, ‘,’, ‘;’, ‘asm’ or ‘__attribute__’ before ‘rtl_pci_probe’
make[2]: *** [/root/rtl_driver/base.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [_module_/root/rtl_driver] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-3.8.0-19-generic'
make: *** [all] Error 2

There is a relevant PPA here:
https://launchpad.net/~lexical/+archive/hwe-wireless
but there's no 13.04 build.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Best Answer

I just had this exact same problem a couple weeks ago, so I put a working driver up on my Git Hub. I also changed it so that it does away with the 20 dBm Tx Power limit and let's you go up to 33 dBm. The instructions are in the repo.

You can clone this with:

git clone https://github.com/FreedomBen/rtl8188ce-linux-driver.git

If you don't have Git installed, you may need to install it first:

sudo apt-get install git

If you are curious, the compile issue is a result of a Linux kernel header change with the 3.8.x kernel. They removed a #define that breaks this code. It doesn't affect functionality though, it just stops it from building. I've been running my compiled driver for several weeks now and it is way better than the one installed by default on 13.04

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