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lwfinger
rtw89
C2021–2023
lwfinger / rtw89

rtw89

Driver for Realtek 8852AE, an 802.11ax device

6Distinct people
6Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
1.5KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Driver for Realtek 8852AE, an 802.11ax device

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by month6 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2021-08-06 15:14:48 UTC to 2023-07-17 17:29:18 UTC.

0122021-08-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-09-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 commentsAug 20212021-09-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-10-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-10-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-11-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2021-11-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-12-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-12-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-02-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2022-02-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-03-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2022-03-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-04-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2022-04-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-05-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2022-05-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-06-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2022-06-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-07-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2022-07-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-08-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 commentsJul 20222022-08-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-09-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2022-09-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-10-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2022-10-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-11-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2022-11-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-12-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2022-12-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-02-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-02-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-03-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-03-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-04-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-04-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-05-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-05-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-06-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-06-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-07-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-07-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-08-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 commentsJul 2023

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
Aug 20212021-08-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-09-01 00:00:00 UTC202
Sep 20212021-09-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-10-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Oct 20212021-10-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-11-01 00:00:00 UTC101
Nov 20212021-11-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-12-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Dec 20212021-12-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jan 20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-02-01 00:00:00 UTC202
Feb 20222022-02-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-03-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Mar 20222022-03-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-04-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Apr 20222022-04-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-05-01 00:00:00 UTC000
May 20222022-05-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-06-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jun 20222022-06-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-07-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jul 20222022-07-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-08-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Aug 20222022-08-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-09-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Sep 20222022-09-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-10-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Oct 20222022-10-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-11-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Nov 20222022-11-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-12-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Dec 20222022-12-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jan 20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-02-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Feb 20232023-02-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-03-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Mar 20232023-03-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-04-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Apr 20232023-04-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-05-01 00:00:00 UTC000
May 20232023-05-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-06-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jun 20232023-06-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-07-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jul 20232023-07-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-08-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

6 sources
This is fascinating but how accurate is this? Because Ping-Ke Shih is credited with the lines related to the rtw89 driver, but looking at their github repo[1] I see no such name in the contributors. Did Ping-Ke just merge the driver and get credited for it? Or are they behind the lwfinger account? Hard to tell but I'd like to buy them a beer or two for that driver, my laptop thanks them. Also interesting to see a fellow Swede Johan Almbladh in the top 5. Apparently this guy is the founder of AnyFi that are trying to deploy Wifi towers in Indonesia. Looking at some of his commits he also works with the Loongson CPU architecture that came out of China many years ago. For a while Richard Stallman was using a laptop with one of those CPUs. 1. https://github.com/lwfinger/rtw89
In 5.16 Kernel Development Statistics
Those 10 year old Thinkpads are still surprisingly capable. I still didn't completely stop using my X220 (also with some HW upgrades like 16GB RAM and ac Wifi) although I bought a Thinkpad P14s Gen 2 (AMD) this year. Some remarks for running Linux on the P14s: > On AMD models, performance was less than stellar for my workloads and not a significant jump over a laptop from 2018. Might be that you need to bump up some power management settings to get full performance via e.g. [1] or [2]. There is also /sys/firmware/acpi/platform_profile but this is broken currently for T14/P14s Gen2 AMD and maybe other models [3]. > Wi-Fi/Bluetooth would not work on one of the laptops, even when I was using an up-to-date Linux distro. Likely related to the type of adapter used (not Intel). Lenovo switched to using a Realtek adapter for some models (due to c
Read the rest
hip shortage according to their Linux support team). Linux 5.16 includes the driver now, there is also a backport [2] for older kernel versions available. [1] https://github.com/FlyGoat/RyzenAdj [2] https://github.com/xsmile/ryzen-ppd [3] https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=215177 [4] https://github.com/lwfinger/rtw89
In I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012
Ach, the usual stuff about NICs being re-re-re-created, incredibly annoying. I thought the same - then I bought in September 2021 a "Lenovo Ideapad 5 Pro 16ACH6" which is when I found out that the "Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device 8852"/"Realtek RTL8111E Ethernet LOM"/"Lenovo Device 4852" needs a brand new driver/module, respectively is not compatible with anything else. I lost a lot of hair until I found "https://github.com/lwfinger/rtw89.git" (thaaanks a lot!!!) which made it work (reliable in my case, even with notebook "suspend-to-RAM"). As of kernel 5.14.5 (on Gentoo) embedded support for that NIC is not available, nor I think in 5.14.12 (not 100% sure - I did not install it, just peeked into it) :(((
In NixOS on Framework Laptop
Got my device. It's super. A warning if any Linux user considers this though: Lenovo specs said Intel WiFi, but it came with Realtek 8852AE, and drivers for this aren't included yet in current kernels. It was straightforward to get it working with https://github.com/lwfinger/rtw89 (latest KDE Neon), but for the time being that will then have to be done after all kernel udpates.
In New Laptop: Thinkpad P14s
I have the same laptop with the 4K IPS display and the AMD 5850U, and I am pretty happy with it. On Ubuntu I had to install the Wi-Fi driver manually [0], tweak the grub config to make the screen brightness control work [1], and install gnome-screensaver to make suspend/resume work properly. Maybe things would work better out of the box on Pop!_OS? Otherwise, it's pretty good. It does not heat up much compared to the previous Intel laptop I had, and it is plenty fast. I was not able to make Howdy [2] work properly, and the fingerprint reader was not reliable compared to my MacBook, however. [0]: https://github.com/lwfinger/rtw89 [1]: Add this to the grub file : GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="amdgpu.backlight=0" [2]: https://github.com/boltgolt/howdy
In New Laptop: Thinkpad P14s

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