WiFi USB not detecting

Help and Support Raspberry Pi
1

OSMC 18.5 2019-11-17 kernel linux 4.19.55-6-osmc on RPI2
my USB wifi dongle “Realtek RTL8192CUS” is not detected the Wireless Tab is not showing up.
i dont have issue with second USB wifi Realtek8191SU both work in windows 10

2

Realtek Drivers that are not supported upstream have been removed from the recent kernel as the rebasing was making too much trouble.
So until realtek releases drivers for recent kernels you would need to choose other wifi dongle

1 Like
3

Sorry but the USB wifi dongle works with LibreELEC 9.2.0 (Leia)

4

That means they still support it for now.
Support isn’t coming back for OSMC (and LE 10 I believe), unless a suitable upstream driver is made available.

5

Ok you have voluntarily discontinued support in the latest version

6

Yes.

We need to move forward, i.e. support devices like Raspberry Pi 4 and this requires a new kernel.

I no longer wish to spend countless hours maintaining WiFi drivers for a company that won’t do it themselves, but still wish to sell the product. I don’t have the time either – but if someone else in the community wants to maintain them, then we can re-add support. It is open source after all.

There are not enough users of these dongles to justify maintaining support anymore. Most users are using a Pi with built-in WiFi.

7

:+1:ok

8

I understand the need to move forward and prioritizing time spent. However, let me illustrate an unfortunate situation:

  • I have a Pi 2 with a Realtek WiFi dongle, which ceased to work after upgrading.
  • I had also bought an OSMC dongle, which is still supposed to be supported, but never provided reliable reception over here (see Can't connect to Wifi with OSMC dongle (5 GHz type) - #72 by sam_nazarko).
  • If I interpret things correctly, the Pi 4, which seems to be a natural upgrade path, is not yet supported by OSMC.

The issue hit me without warning, as I wasn’t even aware of the out-of-tree driver issue. I would have preferred a more coordinated path here: Communicate the upcoming deprecation, giving users time to prepare, then drop support later, in this case ideally at release time for a Pi 4 version of OSMC.

9

We made the 4.19 kernel available for testing with a note that some WiFi modules would be dropped approximately 6 months before release.

You can use an older version for now if you still need this dongle supported

When did you last use the OSMC dongle? There have been a number of improvements since that post.

10

I have used the OSMC dongle right after upgrading to the October update. I was unable to establish reliable reception even on 2.4 GHz.

15

Same thing here with the Edimax dongle, I update today but didn’t update since a lot of months.
So if I understand, the october update was still working with the wifi dongle?

Is there a way to remove RP1 and RP2 from the list of image avalaible for download, since RPI1 and RPI2 doesnt have a onboard WIFI, so yo should warn people to not download it, people still have RPI1 and 2, I have a RPI3 and 2xRPI2, they are working fine for what I need, so why buy another one…

So if soembody can confirm me the latest version working with WIFI dongle it will be great, I will reinstall this image and stop upgrading

Thanks

16

Not everyone uses WiFi, or an unsupported WiFi dongle for that matter, so I don’t think ending support for all non WiFi enabled Pis is a good idea.

17

For sure, but I suggest to put a note so people will know before installing the image

I moved to LibreELEC this morning, since I absolutly need the wifi dongle

Thanks for all the past years, I was with OSMC since the first release.

18

No problem, sorry to see you go.
We need to move forwards, rather than backwards. If Realtek produce appropriate WiFi drivers, we will surely reintroduce support

Keep in mind that LE also plan to deprecate out of tree WiFi drivers, so you are just buying some time

Sam

19

I know, but my last update was in 2017, for what I need to do I don’t have to be up to date, I just updated all my device and all the automatic update will be desactivated for 2 more years :slight_smile:

Thanks again!

20

Installing an older version should do the trick then.

21

Yes I know, that’S why I asked here what was the last one with WIFI dongle support, but didn’T receive an exact answer, so I changed. But if somebody can answer me and if I see that LE is not stable, I will move back to OSMC.

So if somebody has an idea, I still want to know it

22

All versions support WiFi dongles…
It sounds like 2019.10-1 will be the last version to support your specific dongle

Sam

23

OK great, I will download a copy right now and keep it on my PC

Thanks again

24

I was not on version 2019.10.01 previously, I was on a 2017 version, so i don’T know if my dongle was working on 2019.10.01. But I will take this one first. Thanks