Hey Igor and fellow Armbian forum members! I have worked with Armbian on my OPi PC and used the rtl8192cu-fixed github replacement driver, and recently just edited /etc/modules to include 8192cu(btw apt-get upgrade breaks this).

 

However on my Pine64, dmesg says: rtlwifi/rtl8192cufw.bin isn't available. I have tried manually placing the Debian .bin file into the proper /lib but haven't been able to get the wlan0 to show up under iwconfig(yea I have already enabled it in /etc/network/interfaces. lsusb and lsmod both show some entries for 8912cu. Thanks for any insight, and let's hope we can fix this so that people can use their wifi adapters soon .

Also, I'm tired of these sh*tty WiFi adapters and there continuous problems with every damn OS. Though they are recommended as a raspberry pi WiFi adapter. What would you recommend ideally under $10 with n.

apt-get install armbian-firmware-full 

... should solve a problem at least with firmware.

 

Sorry, can't recommend you any rock solid USB wifi adapter. The problem is usually a combination with a driver ... I am not aware how is the quality of a driver, which is a part of a Pain64 kernel ... but you can always try an alternative solution: https://docs.armbian.com/User-Guide_Advanced-Features/#how-to-build-a-wireless-driver

 

Someone may argue this but I think good WiFi chips are rare goods and usually PCI-based - Atheros / Broadcomm / Intel. They are installed into (solid / good) routers, APs and they can easily cost way more than an ARM board. Even those sometimes refuse to work out of the box

I can second Broadcomm and Atheros - I have a Atheros chipset in an old laptop... and it is rock-solid in reliability under both Windows and 'nix. And my Broadcomm-chipset router has yet to give me reason. IIRC, I used 8192cu's also for my RPis, and haven't had any issues with them once they connected... but that could stem partly from the more reliable router. My previous (non-broadcomm chipset) wifi router was good, except whenever my (then new-beaut) Wifi 802.11N capapable laptop jointed the network... it b0rked the whole network. :-/