Group: Hardware/Components/WiFi/Realtek

Cards that work

The Realtek RTL818x Linux drivers don't require any nonfree peripheral software to work.

The drivers contain lengthy init sequences that are poorly documented, but don't contain nonfree peripheral software.

Work to do to add support for more recent cards

More recent Realtek Wi-Fi chips require nonfree peripheral software. Although the manufacturer refuses to provide the source code, they did publish many binaries under the GPLv2, and the GPLv2 allows reverse engineering, decompilation, etc, so it might be possible to reconstruct the source code somehow to get free peripheral software.

Here's some pages with information about that:

• Group:Hardware/research/e-readers/Kobo/Aura_H2O_Edition_2 The Kobo Aura H2O2 Wi-Fi driver has a GPLv2 peripheral binary in the "source"
• In Parabola some people also found another driver with GPLv2 peripheral binary that seems quite similar: https://labs.parabola.nu/issues/2680