Comment 298 for bug 1220146

I feel like I have to share my experience with this WiFi adapter and
ubuntu. I'm in this thread for a few years. In the beginning, I tried
everything, all permutations of kernel versions and driver versions and
sometimes it worked a little better than not working at all, sometimes it
was working but dead slow, but in any way after the next software update,
you would have to start this journey again. Bluetooth never worked
properly. Almost always, nothing was stable. It was like I was spending
days trying to hack the system and make basic vital things work, despite
the fact I spent quite some money on my Ubuntu-based laptop.

Then I gave up and, after googling a lot, I bought another WiFi module
Intel 7620. WiFi was finally stable. Bluetooth never was stable either
though, so I didn't use it and by that time I was just happy to have a
stable WiFi. But after each software update, I held my breath and rechecked
if it still works properly and not lagging at 1MBpS speed. As to Bluetooth
- you can still forget about it.

This is my advice: if you need everything to work properly and stable, and
you need the same Unix eco-system for work\programming (or just because you
like it), my advice - just buy Mac next time you will be upgrading your
hardware. Unfortunately, that's the only way to have Unix-based user
machine (not talking about servers) with working hardware and peripherals.
Ubuntu's driver's system has a major flaw in design because of its hard
dependency on kernel versions. That's why this will *always* happen -
broken drivers, unstable devices etc etc with every update. And that's why
hardware manufacturers don't produce linux drivers much - it's just too
expensive to maintain and redevelop them for each combination of kernel\OS
versions you have.

TLDR: Unfortunately, this is the endless problem you will ALWAYS have in
linux, not just with this WiFi module. No matter how hard the community or
manufacturers commit to Linux's driver's base. If you want a proper
Unix-based system with stable hardware and peripherals, buy Mac and ditch
Ubuntu. Unless you are getting fun digging into kernels and hacking the OS
on a regular basis.

On Mon, Jul 8, 2019 at 1:15 PM Jean <email address hidden> wrote:

> Hello, the kuba-moo / benjarobin driver+patches worked fine until today
> when I migrated from Debian Stretch to Debian Buster. I could get wifi
> working, but not bluetooth, because the 'bpatch' try to uninstall the
> current linux-image and replace it by 5 others packages, which could
> break my system. Something appears to be changed in the way of using
> kernel source, but I don't know enough to understand how to manage it.
> Does anyone use mt7630e with Debian Buster and can help me ? Thanks a
> lot.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
> report.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1220146
>
> Title:
> Ralink Mediatek 14c3:7630 wi-fi card isn't supported out of the box
>
> Status in HWE Next:
> Fix Released
> Status in HWE Next trusty series:
> Won't Fix
> Status in Linux:
> Unknown
> Status in vivid:
> New
> Status in linux package in Ubuntu:
> Triaged
> Status in linux-lts-xenial package in Ubuntu:
> Confirmed
> Status in linux package in Fedora:
> New
>
> Bug description:
> This device is appearing in some OEM machines, but driver is not yet
> available in mainline.
>
> The driver seems to be present in machines with pre-installed OS, but
> isn't available on the download-and-install versions!
>
> The driver that upstream is working on can be found at
> https://github.com/lwfinger/mt7630.
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/hwe-next/+bug/1220146/+subscriptions
>