So you just purchased one of those 802.11ac USB WiFi cards but it’s not working on Linux. Not to worry, I’ve compiled a list of steps to get it working on your Fedora or Debian based distribution. If you’re on Arch Linux or a derivative, the steps will be similar but you’ll have to use pacman to make sure you have the right dependencies.

For Fedora and RPM-esque distributions

Fedora was a bit tricky so you need to make sure you update your system and ensure you have kernel-devel installed. I have the steps for you below

# Ensure your system is up-to-date

sudo dnf update



# If there are new kernel updates, please restart. Once done, install the kernel-devel and dkms package

sudo dnf install kernel-devel kernel-devel-debug dkms


# Once done, you can proceed with the following one-liner

cd /tmp && git clone https://github.com/brektrou/rtl8821CU.git && cd rtl8821CU && chmod +x dkms-install.sh



# Now you can install the dkms script

sudo ./dkms-install.sh



# If all goes well, you can now run the modprobe command

sudo modprobe 8821cu 

For Ubuntu and Debian-esque distributions

Very similar to Fedora, we’re just going to use apt to install a few packages.

# Ensure your system is up-to-date

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade



# If there are new kernel updates, please restart. Once done, install the build-essential git and dkms packages.

sudo apt install build-essential git dkms


# Once done, you can proceed with the following one-liner

cd /tmp && git clone https://github.com/brektrou/rtl8821CU.git && cd rtl8821CU && chmod +x dkms-install.sh



# Now you can install the dkms script

sudo ./dkms-install.sh



# If all goes well, you can now run the modprobe command

sudo modprobe 8821cu 

If you run into any issues, feel free to let me know.

Thanks for reading.