Since the laptop that I tested my AntiX install had its WiFi card broken, I bought a TP-Link’s WiFi adapter, Archer T2U V3 to be specific. Since it is an online general store, I missed the specification that it is V3, which had no Linux driver prepared from TP-link’s website. However, from it’s community forum, here specifically, I found out that it uses RTL8811AU chip-set, and the person suggest the user to search online for the driver of the chip-set.
After some search online, I found that we can download the driver from Aircrack-ng, describe as “a complete suite of tools to assess WiFi network security”, the website is listed below. I used the guide provided in their GitHub page together with a post in peshmerge blog that showed how the adapter can be installed for Ubuntu 20.04.
Unfortunately, however, we still need an internet connection in the first place for making this to work. For context, I used Antix 19.1 on a 64-bit machine.
The steps are as follows:
- Since my installation of AntiX did not include git application, we need to install that first:
sudo apt install git
- The required driver however use
dkms, a system that automatically install kernel module, when a new kernel gets installed, and that is what we need to install next. At least if we don’t have it yet, but antiX 19 already comes with version 2.6, which we can check with the following command:
Rushd@Rushd:~
$ dkms --version
dkms:2.6
If, however, we don’t have it, we can install it using the following command from the terminal:
$ sudo apt-get install dkms
- Next, although we can actually do this before, we need to clone the git repository:
$ git clone https://github.com/aircrack-ng/rtl8812au.git
(I don’t remember if we need sudo for the above, but if you get error you can try start with sudo)
We then navigate to the repository folder: $ cd rtl8812au
- Installing the driver. After navigating to the correct directory, it’s time to “install” the driver using
dkms. If we check the files available in the directories, we will found the following.dkms-install.shanddkms-remove.shto be available.
Rushd@Rushd:~/rtl8812au
$ ls
android dkms-install.sh hal LICENSE platform tools
core dkms-remove.sh include Makefile README.md
dkms.conf docs Kconfig os_dep ReleaseNotes.pdf
Intuitively we can install the driver and remove the driver using the following two commands respectively, sudo ./dkms-install.sh and sudo ./dkms-remove.sh.
- After entering the installation command, we can reboot the computer, after that we might see the LED indicator on the adapter started to light up. But for us antiX users, a few more steps that we need to configure for setting up any WiFi connection
Final step for us AntiX users.
To check in on whether the installed is kind of successful, we can run the following command dkms status.
Rushd@Rushd:~
$ dkms status
broadcom-sta, 6.30.223.271, 4.9.200-antix.1-amd64-smp, x86_64: installed
ndiswrapper, 1.61, 4.9.200-antix.1-amd64-smp, x86_64: installed
rtl8812au, 5.6.4.2, 4.9.200-antix.1-amd64-smp, x86_64: installed
virtualbox-guest, 6.1.6, 4.9.200-antix.1-amd64-smp, x86_64: installed
We see the rt1881.2au was successfully installed.
After we have reboot, plugged in the USB wifi, and go to Control Center, clicked on Network tab, and choose Network Interfaces (Ceni).
From the program, choose the correct hardware, in my case the second one:
Then, we can just scan (we could also roam), and follow the wizard.
And that is how I get the WiFi adapter, TP-Link Archer T2U V3, working in my antiX Setup.
Sites
Aircrack-ng website. https://www.aircrack-ng.org/
Aircrack-ng’s Github website. https://github.com/aircrack-ng/rtl8812au
Morad, P. (June 2020). How to install TP-Link Archer T2U mini wireless adapter on Ubuntu 20.04. Retrieved from https://peshmerge.io/how-to-install-tp-link-archer-t2u-mini-wireless-adapter-on-ubuntu-20-04/
