Which wifi card best supported in 16.04? **Asus AC56**

[psychedelicwonders2]

I want to get a new wireless PCI card for my dual boot Ubuntu 16.04 & Windows 7 build.

So which card company is best supported in 16.04? TP Link or Asus?

It's between these 2 cards, since they seem to be the best in their class:

TP Link T9E AC1900:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833704241

Asus PCE-AC68:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833320173

Or would I be best to go with an Intel card, although with much slower speeds than the first 2 choices, but also has blutooth:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833106251

[Bucky Ball]

Can your router work at the speed of the cards you're looking at?

The brands are not really a factor. It is the wireless card inside the casing that is what is compatible or not, and that can be tricky to confirm.

There is no 'best' card. Some will be supported and some won't. There is no definitive list and once 16.04 LTS is actually released people will no doubt get other cards working.

As usual, when considering graphics or wireless, if the hardware came out tomorrow (it is very new), there's a good chance it won't work, even on the latest Ubuntu.

[mörgæs]

One of the places to get hardware with good support is https://www.thinkpenguin.com/
Besides this I agree with the post above: Before buying stuff you should consider the speed of your router and internet connection.

[pqwoerituytrueiwoq]

In general i would say anything with a Intel chipset is going to be well supported and a good quality part
unless you have a wireless AC router i would not spend over 15-20 on a wifi card, i prefer wired connections
if it is not a AC class router, you can probably find a quality second had card on ebay for a better price, that is what i did to get my wired network card with a intel chipset (my onboard one can't to WOL on linux)

[Beren Camlost]

Asus PCE-AC68:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833320173

While an excellent antenna, this one sports a Broadcom chip and driver support is somewhat flakey. I got this one due to having the wi-fi router upstairs, with a concrete floor inbetween. For that particular purpose, this antenna is actually pretty good.

Now the downside, Broadcom linux support.. Their driver officially supports kernels 3.19 and older. Canonical does bundle a patched version that supports at least kernel 4.2 as of time of writing. I've had isues in the past where I simply had to compile the official driver from source myself in order to have a working driver.

I've yet to get 5Ghz to work with this card in linux, but then I didn't try much. 2.4Ghz works for me.

Basically, if you need solid support, go with something else.

[psychedelicwonders2]

Because I'm watercooling my pc, I think it's best if I just go with dongles for wifi & blutooth so the PCI card isn't an issue when running my water lines to the video card, or the water lines are in the way if I need to remove my wifi card.

I searched new egg and based on reviews & specs, I've narrowed it down to these two wifi dongles:


Rosewill RNX:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...scrollFullInfo

Edimax EW 7822UAC:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833315123

Seems from the reviews on the Edimax there is some kind of work around for Linux, not sure about the Rosewill though.

Do you guys think the Rosewill would be an easier/better choice for 16.04 or should I go with the Edimax?

Both are also USB 3.0 which was a requirement I was looking for with a wifi dongle. The Rosewill is considerably slimmer and won't block other USB ports like the Edimax will, but there are extension cables I could use if that is an issue and the Edimax also as a bit of an external antenna on it.

I don't have an AC router at the moment, but since both of these dongles are only $30, I might as well upgrade that end of it and plan on getting an AC router in the near future since it will be migrating to that frequency in the very near future.

[Yellow Pasque]

Do you guys think the Rosewill would be an easier/better choice for 16.04 or should I go with the Edimax?

Perhaps neither. What chipset does the Rosewill use? Figure that out and we will be better able to answer that question. At any rate, the Edimax adapter uses an Ralink chipset with rt2800usb module that the user needs to compile him/herself. I would avoid any adapter that uses an Ralink (or Broadcom) chipset. Intel and Qualcomm/Atheros chips are the best bets on Linux.

[kurt18947]

Quite a useful site for things wifi related is wikidevi.com. Here is what is says about the Edimax device:

https://wikidevi.com/wiki/Edimax_EW-7822UAC

There appears to be at least a chance of getting this device to work.

The Rosewill seems less promising according to this:

AC1200UB supports following encryptions 64/128 bit WEP, WPA-PSK/WPA2-PSK and IEEE 802.1x with ability to run in Ad-Hoc or Infrastructure modes. What I found strange is the lack of support for Linux machines. AC1200UB is only supported on Windows machines. Digging deeper I found out that this unit is compatible with 802.11AC and 11 a/b/g/n standards.
http://www.modders-inc.com/rosewill-...s-performance/

A cursory search didn't turn up anything about the chipset in this device.

[psychedelicwonders2]

Hmm ok, well back to the drawing board. I know the broadcom is generally not good for linux.

Not sure why I'm having such a hard time finding an intel or Atheros chipped wifi AC dongle?

Should I just get rid of the AC idea for now and just focus on N or something? These two dongles had pretty good ratings and a great price point of $30 for AC so I figured why not, but I def need something compatible with Ubuntu as I'm trying to migrate over to it as much as possible and away from windows.

[kurt18947]

I find N speed perfectly adequate for my purposes but I use a wired connection if i anticipate heavy network usage. I tend to not buy 'bleeding edge' hardware for use on linux machines. Linux developers can't work on drivers and hardware support until a device is released for sale and hardware manufacturers may or may not care whether their devices work with linux.