rtw8852be driver on Debian 12: WiFi fix.

WiFi, is a technology that enables wireless connection between electronic devices, computers, smartphones, tablets, televisions, game consoles, etc. Wi-Fi is a brand of the Wi-Fi Alliance, the organization that promotes this technology and is responsible for certifying all products that comply with established interoperability standards.

A technology that emerged from the need to establish a wireless connection method that was compatible with different devices. Therefore, the Alliance's goal was to design a brand that would more easily promote wireless technology and ensure compatibility between devices.

You may find that right after you finish installing Debian, you are surprised to find that you have no Wi-Fi and that it is completely impossible for you to use your Wi-Fi network card.

The solution to this problem is usually quite simple in most cases. All we need to do to resolve the issue is install the drivers for our Wi-Fi network card as follows.

One of my problems with my new HP laptop was that old distros like Debian 12, Linux Mint with a kernel below 6.2 did not work the wifi network or bluetooth and I had two solutions, 1 compile the RTW8852BE driver or compile a new more modern kernel to give the correct functionality to the new hardware and peripherals of the HP, for everything else everything perfect, so I will give the solution to the problem by compiling the Linux rtw8852be driver for RTW8852BE PCIe card in Debian 12 in this guide to be able to have wifi network and bluetooth:

First we list to see the wifi network card in Debian 12

$ sudo lspci -nn
01:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device [10ec:b852]

Bluetooth and Wifi devices are separate interfaces on the same chip.

For WiFi: https://github.com/lwfinger/rtw8852be

For Bluetooth: https://github.com/lwfinger/rtw89-BT

WiFi Requirements:

You will need to install “make”, “gcc”, “kernel headers”, “kernel build Essentials” and “git”.

For Ubuntu : You can install them with the following command

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install make gcc linux-headers-$(uname -r) build-essential git

For Fedora : You can install them with the following command

$ sudo dnf install kernel-headers kernel-devel
$ sudo dnf group install "C Development Tools and Libraries"

For openSUSE : Install the necessary headers with

$ sudo zypper install make gcc kernel-devel kernel-default-devel git libopenssl-devel

For Arch : install the necessary kernel headers and base-devel,

If any of the above packages are missing, check how your distribution installs them.

Installation for all distributions:

$ git clone https://github.com/lwfinger/rtw8852be.git
$ cd rtw8852be
$ make
$ sudo make install

When your kernel changes, you should do the following:

$ cd ~/rtw8852be
$ git pull
$ make
$ sudo make install

Remember, this MUST be done every time you get a new kernel, no exceptions.

With this, we restart the system and we will have the Wi-Fi activated in our mxlinux, Debian 12.

Requirements for Bluetooth:

rtw89-BT

Out-of-kernel driver for Realtek BT ​​devices found in rtw89 devices.

This driver will be compiled for kernels 5.15+. If you receive compilation errors, please report it to this repository as an issue. I'll do my best to port the code to older kernels.

The repository contains BT drivers for the following known BT parts:

Realtek 8852AE, RTW8852BE and RTW8852CE.

Installation instructions

For Ubuntu : You can install them with the following command

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install make gcc linux-headers-$(uname -r) build-essential git

Users of Debian, Ubuntu, and similar (Mint, etc.) may want to scroll down and follow the DKMS instructions at the end of this document.

For Fedora : You can install them with the following command

$ sudo dnf install kernel-headers kernel-devel
$ sudo dnf group install "C Development Tools and Libraries"

For openSUSE : Install the necessary headers with

$ sudo zypper install make gcc kernel-devel kernel-default-devel git libopenssl-devel

Installation for different distros:

$ git clone git@github.com:lwfinger/rtw89-BT.git
$ cd rtw89-BT
$ make
$ sudo make install

Official sources:
https://github.com/lwfinger/rtw8852be
https://github.com/lwfinger/rtw89-BT