Re: Support for the RTL8821CE

[Havard Eidnes <he%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

> Hi NetBSD users! Im trying to test NetBSD on my laptop and while it works
> perfectly, i can not find my wifi card at ifconfig output.
>
> This wifi card can be found by the name of RTL8821CE; its supported on
> FreeBSD at least. Not on OpenBSD and i couldnt seem to find something about
> this card in the NetBSD documentation.
>
> However, i wanted to confirm with you if theres not any way to make the
> wifi card work, and if not, could it be supported in a future? is it
> expected to get supported some day?

I suspect that's correct.  The only way to make that card work on
NetBSD would be for someone to port the driver for it, by the
looks of it.  I suspect that is going to take a while.

Meanwhile, the shortest-duration path to gettint working wireless
on your laptop is probably buying one of these small USB wifi
dongles, supported e.g. by the urtwn driver.  Quoting from the
urtwn(4) man page:

     The urtwn driver supports USB 2.0 wireless network devices based on
     Realtek RTL8188CUS, RTL8188CE-VAU, RTL8188EUS, RTL8188RU, RTL8192CU and
     RTL8192EU chipsets.

Googling FreeBSD and 8821 leads me to

   https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/rtl8821ce-driver-for-freebsd-14.91960/

and onwards to

   https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2022/09/14/freebsd-cope-with-wifi-fuckup/

and pre-FreeBSD 14 it had the above as one of the suggestions.
I've not tried any other the other variants, I don't know if we
are able to do USB tethering off a phone.

Regards,

- Håvard