Knowledge Base

My previous post about drivers for the Netgear AC600 is years old and that driver does not compile for kernel 6.12.19 or whatever version we're on now.

Thankfully, a quick Internet search reveals https://github.com/lwfinger/rtw88 as a new place you can get such a driver. They had dkms instructions. I didn't need the Secure Boot MOK stuff, so for me it was:

cd /usr/src && sudo git clone https://github.com/lwfinger/rtw88.git rtw88-0.6
sudo dkms add -m rtw88 -v 0.6
sudo dkms build -m rtw88 -v 0.6
sudo dkms install -m rtw88 -v 0.6
sudo dkms status

And then because it was about drivers for low-level stuff, I just rebooted. I poked at modprobe but a reboot was OK. I might have done an update-grub but maybe that was just for the latest kernel and headers anyways.

So then I could rfkill unblock all (gotta change that) and my dusty usb wnic works again, 7 years later!

Sidenote

Man, dkms is really awesome!