ThinkPad 11b/g/n Wireless LAN Mini-PCI Express Adapter III

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ThinkPad 11b/g/n Wireless LAN Mini-PCI Express Adapter III

This is a Mini-PCI Express WiFi Adapter, supported by a driver downloadable from Realtek and in official kernels from version 2.6.38.

Features

  • Chipset: Realtek RTL8188CE
  • IEEE Standards: 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n
  • 1x2 MIMO
  • PCI ID: 10ec:8176

ThinkPad 11b/g/n Wireless LAN Mini-PCI Express Adapter III

Lenovo Partnumbers

  •  ?

Linux support

This chip is supported by the rtlwifi/rtl8192ce driver, which was introduced in kernel 2.6.38. There are two other options available, a Linux driver available for download from Realtek, or ndiswrapper.

ATTENTION!
If you are not comfortable with running development code and have the option, order your ThinkPad with a different WiFi adapter. All other available WiFi options are supported by in-kernel drivers in modern Linux distributions

rtlwifi/rtl8192ce

The rtlwifi/rtl8192ce driver which supports this chip is included in kernel 2.6.38-rc1 and later. With earlier kernels you can install the driver from the wireless-next kernel tree or, if you are running a recent stable kernel, build only the drivers from the compat-wireless branch.

See http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Download/ for instructions about installing compat-wireless.


Installation on Linux Mint Debian Edition

If you use 2.6.38 or later kernels the rtl8192ce driver is already included in the kernel.


Log of install steps with the 2.6.38+ and 3.x kernels:

sudo aptitude install linux-image-amd64

where you should replace 'amd64' with '686' if you run a 32-bit installation. If in doubt you can run

uname -r

to find your current kernel flavor.

sudo aptitude install firmware-realtek

Now you can either manually load the driver with:

sudo modprobe -v rtl8192ce

or reboot to make the kernel load the driver automatically.


Log of install steps with the 2.6.32 kernel:

This section applies for most or all pre-2.6.38 kernels!

Installed iw package as recommended on compat-wireless page.

Downloaded the latest daily compat-wireless tarball (compat-wireless-2011-02-28) from [1] and built it:

tar xvf compat-wireless-2011-02-28.tar.bz2

cd compat-wireless-2011-02-28

./scripts/driver-select rtlwifi

make

sudo make install

sudo make wlunload

sudo modprobe -v rtl8192ce

dmesg said driver loaded but missing firmware

Downloaded rtl8192cfw.bin firmware from linux-firmware git repo [2] and copied it to /lib/firmware/rtlwifi/

from compat-wireless dir:

sudo make wlunload

sudo modprobe -v rtl8192ce


reloaded network-manager service


dmesg still mentioned missing CRDA settings but wireless worked.

Installed wireless-crda package with gdebi-gtk from ubuntu maverick (http://packages.ubuntu.com/maverick/amd64/wireless-crda/download)

from compat-wireless dir:

sudo make wlunload

sudo modprobe -v rtl8192ce

dmesg now loaded regulatory settings too and wireless still worked.

Realtek Linux driver

The Realtek Linux driver for this chip can be downloaded from the Realtek website


Please note: use of this or a similar driver on Lenovo systems may results in unpredictable fatal crashes on some systems! It's is *not* advised to choose this driver.

ndiswrapper

NOTE!
The use of ndiswrapper is not recommended

It may be possible to use the Windows drivers with Ndiswrapper.

ThinkPads this card may be found in