What is the latest version of the RTL8189FS driver?

[Kevin Hoang]

Hi everyone,
 

I'm using the RTL8189FS WiFi module and noticed that the driver included in the current Armbian GitHub repository (https://github.com/armbian) seems to be quite outdated.

I'd like to ask:

- What is the current version of the RTL8189FS driver?

- Is there a newer version available?
 

Thanks in advance!

Edited Friday at 10:07 AM by Kevin Hoang

[Igor]

1 hour ago, Kevin Hoang said:

Is there a newer version available?

No and we can't get new one as it doesn't exists. Common practice is that vendor drops driver sources to the wild and never look back. All costs of maintenance are on few people in and around this community and similar (volunteer based) projects that deals with Linux wireless. This chip is probably only used by few (Orangepi) single board computers and perhaps some Android tablets, TV boxes. Which are not in our focus anyway.

There is some community efforts to bring such drivers to mainline code, but I doubt this chip will ever find a way there - and this doesn't mean that it will work better. Check here
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/tree/master/drivers/net/wireless/realtek

if there is any sign of it.

[c0rnelius]

Not sure what you mean by outdated? Gets updated often or when needed; https://github.com/jwrdegoede/rtl8189ES_linux/tree/rtl8189fs

[Igor]

He probably meant upstream driver version v5.7.9_35795.20191128 

https://github.com/jwrdegoede/rtl8189ES_linux/blob/rtl8189fs/include/rtw_version.h

and by looking into Makefile it feels as we are in 2010

[c0rnelius]

Ah gotcha.

[Kevin Hoang]

Thanks everyone for your input!

Yes, most versions I found online are quite old and likely don’t include any recent updates for encryption handling (including v5.7.9 above).
Does anyone know how to contact Realtek to request a more recent version or updated source code?