Panda PAU09 N600 USB WiFi Works Fine With Linux

[Mabhatter]

Hey look at that! I just built a Linux Ryzen rig (thanks Phoronix) and after dealing with ac dongles that claimed "Linux" support stumbled on this one. This company's whole lineup has Linux support. When I got mine in I had a few days of grief because the USB 2 conflicted with Keyboard and Bluetooth dongles. They were VERY helpful via emailed support, they even sent an email before the product arrived with contact info.

The ac dongle thing is pathetic, I mean how many android things have ac... and that's just Linux under the hood. I think it has to do with OEM parts getting the good parts and drivers and "consumer" parts in dongles are the leftovers.

[starshipeleven]

Don't give me that. I can easily identify at least three USB wifi chipset drivers in the kernel stack that have been hopelessly broken for more than half a decade. To the point I can't be bothered to give an arse about filing bug reports. Time to let other users suffer what I have been suffering all this while.

I don't see how this contradicts what I wrote. Drivers that suck are those that were made without enough help from manufacturer. Ever seen wifi drivers? Magic numbers, magic numbers everywhere. Community can't fix if they don't know.

[Sonadow]

Fixed.
Because guess who is usually making the drivers because they are the only ones with full access to documentation?

Don't give me that. I can easily identify at least three USB wifi chipset drivers in the kernel stack that have been hopelessly broken for more than half a decade. To the point I can't be bothered to give an arse about filing bug reports. Time to let other users suffer what I have been suffering all this while.

[starshipeleven]

This 80211ac usb wifi dongle claims to have Linux support.
http://www.gearbest.com/network-cards/pp_443256.html

They provide drivers for a specific kernel version, since I don't give 2 shits about tiny dongles I looked up something more manly
(antennas = hair on chest, the more the better)
http://www.szedup.com/product-item/8...pter/#tab-id-2


And from its driver download page http://www.szedup.com/support/driver...oad/ep-ac1621/
I see that the linux driver is in uhm, source form, also for Android... but at least it lets me identify WTF of chipset this thing has.

rtl8814AU which is served by an out-of-tree driver here (based off the same source in that "driver" package) https://github.com/diederikdehaas/rtl8814AU/ that supports up to kernel 4.8

Hmmm....

[molecule-eye]

Nice mini-review. Getting tired of making my old Asus PCI wireless card work every time I update the kernel. For convenience (and the right price), I'll just grab a USB adapter that works out of the box.

[starshipeleven]

80211n is now ancient.

80211ad is about to be pushed out and yet we still can't find any 80211ac usb wifi dongles that work OOTB in Linux. What a freaking joke the WiFi hardware manufacturers are.

Fixed.
Because guess who is usually making the drivers because they are the only ones with full access to documentation?

[starshipeleven]

Really, the range of a relatively large external wifi antenna is comparable to the internal wifi cards found in ultrabooks? Is that a good thing?

That's because it is a type of antenna that isn't terribly effective and is also omnidirectional (again worst case), vs the fact that most laptops solder the wifi antennas to the screen's metal frame or to the EMI shield behind it (large as the screen) so it's normal that it is less crappy than it on average.

If you replace that crap with any half-decent biquad or mini-yagi or whatever it will pwn the laptop any day with an antenna that is big as your fist, with a shoestring budget and a slightly bigger antenna you can get up to a few of km of range on such adapters. See here for some examples. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=double+biq...ax=1&ia=images
Buying a commercial antenna with similar performance is rather expensive, but they come in nice rain-proof casings as they are pro stuff.

[starshipeleven]

Good to know something like this exists now. Years ago, I was looking for a dual band PCI Express card and couldn't understand why there were none to be found anywhere. I eventually realised that routers, at least at the time, must have had two adapters.

There are also router-only chipsets or Router SoCs that integrate dualband wifi.

[starshipeleven]

From the Amazon page:

Works with 2.4GHz and 5GHz 802.11 ac/b/g/n networks

That's bullshit, this is a wifi N dualband device just like all other chipsets run by rt2800usb driver.

NEVER trust Amazon descriptions. It's already great when they post the correct model name.

They should have written a/b/g/n. The "a" on the beginning is a different and ancient type of wifi.

[mastercoms]

80211n is now ancient.

80211ad is about to be pushed out and yet we still can't find any 80211ac usb wifi dongles that work OOTB in Linux. What a freaking joke the Linux WiFi driver stack is.

From the Amazon page:

Works with 2.4GHz and 5GHz 802.11 ac/b/g/n networks