Ubuntu – Ubuntu 12.04 Realtek RTL8188E Wireless Card Not Detected

12.04networkingwirelesswubi

I have Ubuntu 12.04 (WUBI) on my Toshiba Satellite. I have a Realtek RTL8188E Wireless LAN 802.11n. The internet works fine when I plug it in using a ethernet cable, but my laptop doesn't even search for wifi. I have Windows 7 and my wifi works fine. How do I make my wireless internet work?

$ lspci -nn | grep 0280 
Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8188EE Wireless Network Adapter [10ec:8179] (rev 01)

Best Answer

Please get a temporary wired ethernet connection and do:

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic build-essential

I suggest you download this to your desktop: https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/projects/backports/stable/v3.12.2/backports-3.12.2-1.tar.bz2 Right-click it and select 'Extract Here.' Now open a terminal and do:

cd ~/Desktop/backports-3.12.2-1/
make defconfig-rtlwifi
make
sudo make install
sudo modprobe rtl8188ee

Your wireless should now be working. You will have compiled the driver for your currently running kernel only. When Update Manager installs a later linux-image, after reboot, re-compile:

cd ~/Desktop/backports-3.12.2-1/
make clean
make defconfig-rtlwifi
make
sudo make install
sudo modprobe rtl8188ee

If the message logs say you need firmware:

dmesg | grep rtl

Download and install it with:

wget http://mirror.pnl.gov/ubuntu//pool/main/l/linux-firmware/linux-firmware_1.106_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i linux*.deb 
sudo modprobe -r rtl8188ee && sudo modprobe rtl8188ee
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