How to setup Asus Eee PC 1201N Wireless Card on Ubuntu 9.10?

21 Replies

The first thing you need to know it’s that although the PCI output shows a Realtek 8171 wireless adapter, in reality it is a Realtek RTL8191SE!

With this in mind you only need to download this file which was referenced in this thread on post #134 and execute the commands below. Make sure to remove the NDISWrapper driver before doing this if you have already installed and set it up.

After download, unpack driver:

$ tar xvf rtl8192se_linux_2.6.0010.1211.2009.tar.gz
$ cd rtl8192se_linux_2.6.0010.1211.2009
$ sudo make

Then you need to edit two files:

$ sed -i 's/install: modules/install:/g' ./ieee80211/Makefile
$ sed -i 's/install: modules/install:/g' ./HAL/rtl8192/Makefile

Finally install and load:

$ sudo make install
$ sudo echo "r8192se_pci" >> /etc/modules
$ sudo modprobe r8192se_pci

Your wireless should now be working.

Credits go out to CompMas2 of ubuntuforums.org for the quick answer and to david woo of lauchpad.net for making this driver available.

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  • jim

    worked nicely on 10.04, syntax errors on the ‘echo “r8192se_pci” >> /etc/modules’ command but its working anyway, many thanks!

    • http://www.blog.joaomorais.com João Morais

      Hi Jim,

      That’s an error related with WordPress syntax highlighter if you press “View Source” button (which appears in the top-right of the code block), you’ll see it right.

      Thanks for your comment, I’m glad it helped you.

  • jp

    thanks! first it didn’t work but i did a reboot and worked fine! :D

  • http://www.blog.joaomorais.com João Morais

    Hi jp,
    Great news! I’m glad this post has helped you.

  • Hank

    Good stuff. There is a newer driver direct from Realtek, Linux driver for 2.6 kernels.

    Works about 50% of the time with suspend/resume…

    Have you gotten your Mic to work? This is still a problem for me with the 1201n. Recently went to Lucid and my advice is stick to Karmic for now, Beta 1 has a bunch of issues with this netbook.

    Cheers.

  • Tek

    wow I was looking for hours trying to fix this. worked great. you are the man

  • Kal

    Cool! Thanks for the tips!
    Just got wireless working for a fresh install of Fedora 12 using the latest linux drivers from Realtek.
    Needed to install kernel-devel, kernel-headers, and gcc to get the build to work.
    Also, one of the Makefiles is in a different directory now:
    ieee80211 -> rtllib
    With Fedora you don’t seem to need the module.conf stuff:
    modprobe r8192se_pci just works

  • Phius

    Thank you :D

    Worked fine on 10.04 inside 1201n.

  • Oliver Schonrock

    on lubuntu 10.04 (ie the new lxde OS)
    i had to do these additional steps

    before compiling
    sudo apt-get install gcc linux-headers-generic

    before installing
    sudo mkdir -p /etc/acpi/events

    after a reboot..worked like a dream..thanks!
    much better than that ndiswrapper rubbish

  • Modrus

    It really works on Ubuntu 10.04 32bits.
    I done the additional steps suggest by Oliver Schonrock.

    Thank you all, I have done some tutorials before but it doesn’t work until now =)

  • viperbas

    This fixs works fine on Ubuntu 9.10 / 32bits.
    I will try to update my netbook to 10.4 LTS and test it.

  • http://www.blog.joaomorais.com João Morais

    @Hank,
    That’s one of the things I don’t use, so I really don’t know if it is working fine, I’ll check that later.

    Thanks for your reply, it might help someone else! :)

  • http://www.blog.joaomorais.com João Morais

    @Tek,
    No problem, glad it helped you. :)

  • http://www.blog.joaomorais.com João Morais

    @Kal,
    Glad it helped you mate. Thanks for your feedback! :)

  • http://www.blog.joaomorais.com João Morais

    @Phius,
    Nice to hear that.
    Currently I’m still on 9.10 but that’s a plus if I think about updating to a newer version.

  • http://www.blog.joaomorais.com João Morais

    @Oliver Schonrock,
    Thanks a lot for your feedback mate, it seems that it already helped another person. :)
    Cheers.

  • http://www.blog.joaomorais.com João Morais

    @Modrus,
    Glad it helped you mate. Thanks for your feedback!

  • http://www.blog.joaomorais.com João Morais

    @viperbas,
    Take a look at @Oliver Schonrock comment, see if that helps and give us some feedback please.

  • viperbas

    @Oliver his feedback was very usefull. Today I installed 10.04 (i386) and WiFi is working great.

  • ari

    Thank you very very much! i’ve installed Fedora 13 on my Asus EEE 1201N and this worked for me. The sed lines and the etc/modules line were not necesary.

  • http://www.google.com.mx David Cobb

    I agree with the post above and I will find more information from google.