Acer V3-372 WiFi Backup Plan with RTL8192cu

My $2 USB wifi adapter arrived a few days ago. At first I was very disappointed as the speed was excruciatingly slow.

I learned that this was due to poor hardware crypto performance. A simple swenc=1 option in module load up fixed it.

While I believe it is possible to compile a driver for the QCA6174 wireless module, I think this is likely to be more hassle than it is worth and so I ordered an Intel 7265n wifi card until the Qualcomm card gets mainline support.

QCA6174 Linux WiFi Support ath10k

The drivers in the Debian 4.2 and 4.3 kernels do not currently work reliably with the QCA6174 card even with the latest WiFi card firmware.

I have seen some proposed kernel patches and will see if I can get an externally built module to work.

I am hoping that there will be kernel support soon as even if it does work, maintaining an out of tree driver will be a pain.

For now, I am using an external USB wifi dongle .In the worst case, I can replace the wifi card with a better supported one, but I find that a non-working wifi card isn't as big a problem as I thought because:

• I can use wired lan
• When I am on the move, I anyway USB tether to my phone which has a wireless plan
• I can use a USB wifi dongle