Need help with WiFi dongle

[Fuegeaux]

Long story short, but the wifi of my SD died, and I was not fortunate enough to get an RMA from Steam Support (I'm 5 months out of warranty). I have tried everything Support said to try, plus some things I have read on here. Nothing works. My only options are to send it to Steam's repair center for a lot of money, or try to get a WiFi dongle.

I bought https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09KTDXPY3 (plus a USB C adapter) and when I plugged it in, no WiFi. I went to the Konsole and ran a lsusb -t, found the adapter in the listing, but it had Driver=,, meaning it didn't find a driver. When I asked Support about it, they said they couldn't give me directions on how to install a driver, nor would they tell me what WiFi dongles were compatible with the SD. They suggested I "ask the community".

So, I'm doing that.

How do I go about installing a driver? Not really sure where to look, and even if I found one, how to install it. I'm not completely ignorant of linux, but SteamOS is different

Has anyone had success with a WiFI dongle "out of the box"? If so, which one?

I can get internet when I use a wired connection

Thanks!

[Mahjik]

What you want to look for is an adapter that has "in-kernel" Linux support. SteamOS is not your typical distro so even that still may pose a bit of a challenge but that would be the first place to start.

Also, if shopping on Amazon, scroll down to the Q&A section. In the Q&A search, put in Linux and you'll see comments of people who tried them with Linux OS's.

[shadowboy813]

I just tested on my LCD deck. USB tethering with a c-to-c cable on my Pixel 6a worked. This will, however, either drain the deck's battery as it charges the phone, or worse, the phone's battery as it charges the deck.

[Zef]

You're pretty much screwed since the wifi module is soldered onto the mobo and ifixit hasn't had those in stock for quite a while now due to low demand.

Most of the times it's either screens, battery, thumgrips, but not the mobo itself that gets broken.

I'd just sell it second handed and get myself an OLED.

[FoxHound]

You screwed bud, Steam Deck will not support the USB Wifi because of Linux

[darrenwilkinsonap]

Originally posted by FoxHound:

You screwed bud, Steam Deck will not support the USB Wifi because of Linux

How would this stop USB wifi from working?

[ReBoot]

Originally posted by shadowboy813:

I just tested on my LCD deck. USB tethering with a c-to-c cable on my Pixel 6a worked. This will, however, either drain the deck's battery as it charges the phone, or worse, the phone's battery as it charges the deck.

You have to buy a WLAN NIC while looking specifically for Linux compatibility. With Linux, you can't just grab whatever's on the shelf. Well, you could also tether your phone via WLAN or Bluetooth. Not quite sure how that goes battery-wise though as RF takes quite a lot of energy, compared to copper connections.

Originally posted by darrenwilkinsonap:

Originally posted by FoxHound:

You screwed bud, Steam Deck will not support the USB Wifi because of Linux

How would this stop USB wifi from working?

Pretty simple: despite the term "kernel module" existing, Linux isn't modular in practice. Specifically in the "I'm using a PC" practice (not the "I'm building an appliance" practice where the Linux model makes really good sense). That means that Linux comes with drivers for hardware (including WLAN) built in and if a driver for a specific piece isn't you're ♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Well, not entirely, you can, in theory, download the driver sources for that thing (if there's any) and compile it. That is if you wanna wade through a rainforest worth of error message (because why making compiling easy once forcing you to, easy is for wimps). So practically, if Linux doesn't support that particular piece of hardware out-of-the-box, you can't use it easily if at all. There's quite a lot of pieces of hardware Linux doesn't support because Linux is, in practice, a closed system. If you're a hardware vendor, you can't just compile & publish a Linux driver as Linux wants to assimilate your work, not co-operate.

[dream_smash]

he "community" they are talking about is probably not this one, I think they are talking about a place like the link below.

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=279782
https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/15dy2ar/rtl8812au_driver/?rdt=50301