A little over a year ago, I built a new computer from scratch that has an
ASUS M5A99FX PRO R2.0 motherboard. For getting online, I used the
ThinkPenguin 802.11n wireless USB dongle instead of the Realtek 8111F Gigabit
LAN port that by default tries to use the r8169 firmware. Unlike Ubuntu's
kernel, the Linux Libre kernel deblobs the r8169 firmware which is considered
non-free and since I never bothered with the ethernet until now, it wasn't an
issue.
So why did I switch back to ethernet? I work from home and I have a detached
garage that I use as my mancave/office and have been getting terrible
wireless reception. Maybe it was the distance or since my house is old and
solid, it could be that. Or it could be the Motorola cable modem/router combo
didn't want to play nice with the dongle.
I started looking into powerline ethernet where you send the internet through
the power in your house by using two outlet plugs. One is in an outlet near
my router attached to the router with a CAT6 and the other is in my detached
garage with another CAT6 running to my PC.
So to get to the point of this post is that if your motherboard has a Realtek
ethernet that uses the r8169 firmware by default and is deblobbed in
Trisquel, there's the r8168-dkms package that works the same.
This is what I did to get my ethernet running in Trisquel 7:
1.) If using Trisquel 7 with the 3.13 (default) kernel, download r8168-dkms
from http://packages.trisquel.info/belenos/r8168-dkms. If using Trisquel 7
with the 3.19 (Vivid) kernel, download r8168 from
http://packages.ubuntu.com/vivid/r8168-dkms. I know I am pointing to an
Ubuntu package, but it should be free and in my experience, plays nicer with
the 3.19 kernel since the 3.19 kernel is the default in Ubuntu 15.04/Vivid.
2.) Blacklist r8169 driver by adding r8169 to the bottom of
/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf as sudo/su and save.
3.) Make sure dkms is installed via "sudo apt-get install dkms" if not
already installed.
4.) Install r8168-dkms_8.037.00-1_all.deb (3.13 kernel) or
r8168-dkms_8.039.00-1_all.deb (3.19 kernel)
5.) Add r8168 to the bottom of /etc/modules as sudo/su and save.
6.) If there are issues, run "sudo dpkg-reconfigure r8168-dkms"
7.) May or may not have to reboot after blacklisting, installing DKMS
package, or dpkg-reconfigure
I haven't tested this with the 4.x kernels offered at
http://jxself.org/linux-libre/ but since the 3.13 and 3.19 kernels are
offered in the Trisquel 7 repos and have the same naming conventions and
versions as the Ubuntu ones, the r8168-dkms package should play nice with
them.
