RTL8723bs WiFi

[steveo]

Hi
I have really enjoyed playing with TinyCore for the past 5 years or so on Pi, PC and VM. Thankyou.
I have now installed TinyCorePure64-12.0 to an Intel Compute stick STCK1A32WFC.
I am not presently interested in BT or audio but value WiFi, none of which are detected by the kernel.
That is to say there is no mention of them in dmesg.
Everything else seems to be working well.

I have successfully installed three different USB wifi adapters as a trouble shooting exercise.
A Netgear RTL8187, a TPLink AR9271 and a no brand MT7601u.
While they all worked well, a Linksys RT3572 would not.

Looking inside wireless-5.10.3-tinycore64.tcz \wireless\realtek\rtlwifi\ I can't find any reference to RTL8723bs.
Likewise in \wireless\ralink\ I can not find any RT3572.
I would have assumed that this meant that niether the RTL8723bs or RT3572 are supported.
But to confuse myself further I looked inside firmware-rtlwifi.tcz lib\firmware\rtlwifi\ and found references to the RTL8723bs.

I have read many forums relating to older versions of Core and other distros.
The only success appears to have come from recompiling, a task I don't care for.

Q. Does TinyCore support the RTL8723bs, is it broke or am I.

[Juanito]

Have you confirmed the linksys wifi hardware using lsusb from the usb-utils extension?

[Rich]

Hi steveo
Welcome to the forum.

... While they all worked well, a Linksys RT3572 would not. ...

Searching the kernel source package shows that driver listed as experimental:

Code: [Select]

config RT2800USB_RT35XX
        bool "rt2800usb - Include support for rt35xx devices (EXPERIMENTAL)"
        default y
        ---help---
          This adds support for rt35xx wireless chipset family to the
          rt2800usb driver.
          Supported chips: RT3572The kernel config file shows that option is disabled:

Code: [Select]

# CONFIG_RT2800USB_RT35XX is not set

... I can't find any reference to RTL8723bs. ...

The kernel sources show this driver does exist:

Code: [Select]

config RTL8723BS
        tristate "Realtek RTL8723BS SDIO Wireless LAN NIC driver"
        depends on WLAN && MMC && CFG80211
        depends on m
        select WIRELESS_EXT
        select WEXT_PRIV
        ---help---
        This option enables support for RTL8723BS SDIO drivers, such as
        the wifi found on the 1st gen Intel Compute Stick, the CHIP
        and many other Intel Atom and ARM based devices.
        If built as a module, it will be called r8723bs.Unfortunately, it is listed under staging:

Code: [Select]

menuconfig STAGING
        bool "Staging drivers"
        default n
        ---help---
          This option allows you to select a number of drivers that are
          not of the "normal" Linux kernel quality level. ...

 ----- Snip -----The kernel config file shows that too is disabled:

Code: [Select]

# CONFIG_STAGING is not set

The kernel config file can be found here:
http://tinycorelinux.net/12.x/x86_64/release/src/kernel/config-5.10.3-tinycore64

[steveo]

Hey Juanito
No, I did not try lsusb in any of my testing.
I was only using lshw and dmesg.
Now that I have tried lsusb I can see the Lynksys with all the helpful data as well.
Thanx for that.

Hey Rich
Thank you for explaining how this area of TC works.
I now know where to look to answer my own questions regarding device support.
To compile or not to compile ...

For me the only difference between a workable distro and one that is not is helpful forums like this.

[Rich]

Hi steveo

... Thank you for explaining how this area of TC works. ...

Just wanted to clarify, all Linux kernels rely on a config file to determine which features are enabled. How distros
configure their kernels is one of the ways they differentiate themselves.