rtl8187se chipsets (that's the PCI express version), used the r8187se
kernel module up till the 3.14 kernel.
From linux kernel version 3.15 and up, r8187se
is removed and rtl8180
module gained support for the r8187se
chipsets.
So far so good, except that the rtl8180
driver does not seem to work properly for the owners of rtl8187se
cards.
A friend has reported getting only 15% signal regardless the network.
I grabbed the module from version 3.14 before it was deleted, changed the Makefile a bit to allow building it as an external module, and made packages for Archlinux / Gentoo to make the process easier.
It may need to be rebuilt across some minor / major kernel updates.
To blacklist the rtl8180
module enter the following:
echo "blacklist rtl8180" > /etc/modprobe.d/rtl8180_blacklist.conf
If the r8187se
is not loaded automatically, you can add it yourself in Archlinux & Gentoo (with systemd):
echo r8187se > /etc/modules-load.d/r8187se.conf
For Gentoo with OpenRC, add it to the modules array: modules="... r8187se"
in /etc/conf.d/modules
The package is provided by the AUR. You can install it with an AUR helper of your choice: rtl8187se
or manually by invoking the following commands as a regular user. (to build packages from the AUR, the base-devel
package group is assumed to be installed)
wget https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/rt/rtl8187se/rtl8187se.tar.gz
tar xf rtl8187se.tar.gz
cd rtl8187se
makepkg -si
The package is provided by the gentoo-el
overlay. You can install it with the following commands as root. (you need to have layman
installed and configured)
layman -a gentoo-el
emerge net-wireless/rtl8187se